Renzo Guolo 24 May 2024
The death of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, almost certainly the designated heir of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, has exposed the contradictions at the heart of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Said contradictions lie both in the country’s institutional denomination – a true political oxymoron – and in its constitutional architecture, formed in 1979 when the revolution was still developing, and not yet wholly wedded to its Islamist matrix.