In the 24 hours after the unexpected death of the Islamic Republic’s president, Ebrahim Raisi, the following things happened: the BBC published a headline about his “mixed legacy,” the UN flew its flag at half-staff to honor him, and the U.S. Senate chaplain offered a prayer for him on the Senate floor.

Such morally bankrupt responses would shock Iranians who launched fireworks in cities across the country after his death, took to social media to celebrate it, and handed out candy in the street.

The question is whether the people celebrating on social media, and the ones keeping their disgust for the regime out of the limelight, can convulse the theocracy’s political system. In 50 days, according to Iranian law, the government must hold a presidential election. Will Iranians take to the streets in great numbers?

Never underestimate the Iranian people, who have consistently risen up over the last decade. The last regime-shaking protests were sparked by a young Kurdish Iranian woman, Mahsa Amini, 22, who died while she was in the custody of the morality police in 2022 for not wearing a headscarf.

Given Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s success last year in violently suppressing those protests—at least 516 people were killed, almost 900 injured, and 20,000 jailed—the 85-year-old won’t be squeamish in crushing rallies that again challenge the theocracy’s legitimacy.

But Khamenei must be wary because beneath the surface, Iran is essentially a volcano—a large magma pool of discontent always pressing against the security services, hunting for a weak point, a provocation, that will crack the fear that keeps back an eruption. Raisi’s death won’t likely produce a tremor, but whenever the regime’s security services confront the Iranian people, a fissure might happen.

One thing that won’t change is the Biden administration’s approach to Iran.

Although Raisi wasn’t the worst mullah that Khamenei could have advanced to the presidency in 2021 (there were a few even more brutal and religiously twisted), he was among those whose evil was clearly documented. Raisi earned the sobriquet “The Butcher of Tehran” when he served as the prosecutor general of the city between 1989 and 1994. He participated in a so-called death commission that ordered the executions of thousands of political prisoners in 1988. And yet, after his “election,” the Biden administration didn’t hesitate to try to reestablish another nuclear deal and some kind of peaceful regional modus vivendi with the Islamic Republic.

Our strategic reality is this: Iran could have Jack the Ripper as president and Joe Biden and his national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, would still choose to continue Barack Obama’s policy of engagement.

The Free Press