"Iranians Have Lost Faith in the Ballot Box": Trita Parsi on President Raisi's Death

This past weekend, a helicopter crash in the northwest province of East Azerbaijan left no survivors, including Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi. His death comes not only as fighting continues between Iran-backed Hezbollah and Israel, but also just a little over a month since Iran launched its first-ever direct attack on Israel.

Iranian-American relations expert Trita Parsi joined Mehdi Hasan to discuss the elephant in the room – whether there was any “foul play” involved with his death, or if anyone is blaming Israel or the U.S. for the crash.

“The regime has a very clear interest in denying that there could have been anything else but an accident, because if there, for instance, had been an Israeli hand in all of this…it would show that the Iranians failed with their attack last month. They did not establish a new equation. They did not restore deterrence,” Parsi said. “Now, having said that, there’s no evidence that the Israelis were behind this.”

Iran has, of course, said they will be holding new elections on June 28th to choose a successor for Raisi, but Parsi tells Mehdi that participation will once again be low, just as it was in March’s parliamentary election.

“The people have lost faith in the idea that change can come through the ballot box. Now they [Iran] are going to be dealt with a crisis, because if they have even record low elections in this one that is upcoming right now, it really takes away a key thing that they had treated as a dose of legitimacy,” Parsi said.

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