Threat of WW3 looms on as Iran insists as chopper death of president Raisi ‘WON’T deter regime’ amid nuke tensions
IRANIAN leader Ali Khamenei has scrambled to assure his country that its warped regime will continue as normal following the death of president Ebrahim Raisi.
Dubbed "The Butcher", Raisi died on Sunday when a helicopter he was travelling on crashed in the mountains killing everyone onboard.
The 63-year-old hardline leader was being groomed to one day succeed Iran's supreme leader Khamenei, aged 85.
His sudden death, alongside the country's foreign minister Hossein Amirabdollahian, comes amid a backdrop of broiling Middle East tensions.
Iran has been the subject of intense international scrutiny after its proxy terror group Hamas sparked a brutal ongoing war with Israel in October last year.
And as the war rages on, Iran itself directly attacked Israel prompting Tel Aviv to strike down the threat with a precision strike in April.
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Sir Ivor Roberts, senior adviser to United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) and former British diplomat, told The Sun that Raisi's death will not hurt Khamenei's nefarious rule.
He said: "Nothing is going to change the regime's course. Either the whole regime has to be toppled or it'll just carry on in much the same way.
"The message from the regime in Iran will be business as usual.
There will be a tremendous determination to ensure that there is no popular dissent emerging.
Sir Ivor Roberts
"But [Raisi] was being groomed as the successor to the supreme leader. And that's what makes what has happened of particular note."
Khamenei told Iranians this morning that there would be no disruptions to the running of the country following his death.
But it will no doubt stoke existing fears across the nation of a wider war after last month's unprecedented direct attacks between Israel and Iran.
Sir Ivor explains that Iran will fall back on its formidable Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to quash any uprisings following Raisi's death.
"The regime will simply, I think, double down. There will be a tremendous determination to ensure that there is no popular dissent emerging.
"They will already be, you know, orchestrating the weeping and tears for the the fallen President."
The warped IRGC troops will be wheeled out to "play a particularly aggressive role in ensuring that there is no dissent and no sign of fractures in the regime".
Khamenei announced a nationwide period of mourning for five days and has appointed vice president Mohammad Mokhber to power.
Sir Ivor said: "There will be mass funerals and and mass implications of great popular support, which, in fact, is all nonsense."
In fact Iranians are celebrating the death of Raisi, a tyrannical puppet of Khamenei, with cheering in the streets.
Sir Ivor explained: "Because in fact during his presidency... there's been a full scale confrontation with Israel which they [Iran] long wanted to avoid preferring to use proxies.
And he said "there's been massive demonstrations against the regime as a result of the crackdown on Hijab wearing and and chastity."
IRAN V ISRAEL: NUCLEAR FEARS
Sir Ivor, an expert in Iran's secretive nuclear projects, warned that the regime will not be deterred from pushing its clandestine nuke agenda after news of the president's death.
The country's covert, iron-clad nuclear bases are cause for concern amongst the world's nuclear watchdogs.
Former UN inspector David Albright, based in Iraq, previously warned that Iran could produce enough enriched uranium for 12 nuclear bombs in just months.
Some of the information I've seen suggests that they're really only months away from being able to do so.
Sir Ivor Roberts
Sir Ivor told The Sun: "I think they will carry on as clandestinely as they can to develop a nuclear weapon capability.
"Some of the information I've seen suggests that they're, you know, really only months away from being able to do so.
"The collapse of the nuclear deal with all its imperfections has only encouraged them to carry on, doing it further and faster."
Tehran is thought to harbour considerable stores of the dangerous enriched element - just shy of the weapons grade level needed to make an atomic bomb.
If it did get its hands on such a weapon, arch enemy Israel would likely be at the top of the list of targets.
Natanz, an underground nuke base shielded by armed IRGC troops, anti-aircraft defences and perimeter-wide fencing, is Iran's primary uranium enrichment facility.
Rare satellite images recently exposed the plant - nestled in the Zagros mountains - in a rare insight into Iranian nuclear efforts.
On April 13 Iran launched an unprecedented aerial onslaught at Israeli soil - trying, but failing, to strike it with hundreds of missiles.
In the first attack of its kind, Iran hurled 110 ballistic missiles, 36 cruise missiles and 185 attack drones across Middle Eastern airspace.
THE BUTCHER PRESIDENT
The so-called Butcher president, Sir Ivor explains, was raised to power in his very early twenties as a judge turned politician.
Now the Iranian regime has 50 days to replace him before a constitutionally mandated election.
Sir Ivor told The Sun: "He came came to prominence very young as a judge when he was in his very early twenties. Just after the Iranian Revolution.
"He'd bloodied himself by being involved in the mass execution of political activists against the Revolution in its earlier years. And that's where he earned the charming nickname of the butcher.
"He had an appalling record, and I think anyone of a moderate or liberal disposition in Iran must have been dismayed that when he was elected president 3 years ago."
Dr Alan Mendoza, executive director of the Henry Jackson Society think tank, told The Sun that Raisi was "responsible personally for thousands of deaths".
He oversaw the deaths of "protesters and other innocents who had crossed the regime in some way, shape or form, including most recently in the Mahsa Amini protests".
He said: "[Raisi] was one of the front runners to be the successor to the supreme leader, who is, of course, now in his mid eighties.
"So by losing him, that has created a bit of a vacuum at the top of Iranian politics."
Dr Mendoza says the Iranian people have been "remarkable in their degree of opposition over the last 30 years to the regime", and are celebrating Raisi's death in the streets.
Iran, he explains, "believes the hands of its enemies are everywhere", and conspiracy theories will be swarming.
Ali Ansari, a professor of Iranian studies and a member of think tank RUSI, also told The Sun that the Iranian regime's elite could see some instability as Raisi is replaced.
He said: "It's a paranoid place, so conspiracy theories will go. Very few people will believe it was an accident.
"Now they've got to find a replacement for him.
"There's going to be jockeying between the different hard line factions trying to find out who's going to replace them, and they have to do it in a fairly rapid time. Nobody's been lined up."
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For now, vice president Mohammad Mokhber has been appointed.
Prof Ansari tells The Sun he is "very close to the IRGC" and can be "tightly controlled" by both the proxy force group and the Supreme Leader himself.