President Ebrahim Raisi passed away in a helicopter crash on Monday, according to Iranian official media, necessitating the taking of certain procedural procedures to appoint a successor.
Article 131 of Iranian legislation states that in the event of a president’s death while in office, the first vice president, Muhammad Mokhber, assumes the presidency with the approval of the supreme leader, who has the last word in all things pertaining to state affairs in Iran.
A council that consists of the speaker of parliament, the head of the judiciary, and the first vice president is also required to set up a new president’s election within a maximum of fifty days.
Here are some important details about Mohammad Mokhber, 68, the first vice president of Iran who took over as president in an acting capacity when Ebrahim Raisi died in a helicopter accident.
Along with the speaker of the house of representatives and the head of the judiciary, Mokhber serves as interim president and is a member of a three-person committee that will arrange a new presidential election within 50 days of the deceased president’s passing.
Like Raisi, Mokhber was born on September 1, 1955, and is seen as close to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who has the final say in all affairs of state. When Raisi won the presidency in 2021, Mokhber was elected as the first vice president.
Reuters was informed at the time by sources that Mokhber was a member of an Iranian delegation that travelled to Moscow in October with the intention of giving Russia’s military additional drones and surface-to-surface missiles. Two senior Revolutionary Guards of Iran officials and a representative from the Supreme National Security Council were also on the team.
Previously, Mokhber oversaw Setad, an investment fund connected to the supreme commander.
Mokhber was put on a list of people and organisations that the European Union sanctioned in 2010 due to accusations that he had engaged in “nuclear or ballistic missile activities.” It took two years for it to take him off the list.
Setad and the 37 companies it supervised were added to the US Treasury Department’s list of sanctioned organisations in 2013.
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the predecessor of Ayatollah Khamenei, established Setad, whose full name is Setad Ejraiye Farmane Hazrate Emam, or the Headquarters for Executing the Order of the Imam. After the tumultuous years following the Islamic Revolution in 1979, it directed assistants to maintain and sell assets that were allegedly abandoned, allocating the majority of the earnings to charitable causes.
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