“All the bodies were recognizable despite their burns,” Mohammad Hassan Nami, head of Iran’s Disaster Management Organization, told IRNA on Monday. There was no need for DNA testing.

It took more than 18 hours for Iranian search and rescue teams to find the crash site after a helicopter ferrying Ebrahim Raisi and Hossein Amir Abdollahian suffered what state media described as a “technical failure” near the border with Azerbaijan, where the two men attended an event to inaugurate a dam project.

Tehran rejected reports that the country relied on foreign assistance to locate the wreckage, discovered at roughly 5 AM local time Monday in a mountain forest shrouded in fog. The IRGC participated in the recovery effort. One official said Ayatollah Mohammad Ali Al-e Hashem, a senior cleric and an imam in Tabriz, survived the initial crash impact and managed to call the president’s office before dying of his injuries.

Both Raisi and Amir Abdollahian were unapologetic hardliners. As discussed here on Sunday evening, Raisi was widely viewed as a potential successor to Khamenei.

An unflinching adherent to the strict moral codes and severe ideology that define the theocracy’s authoritarianism, Raisi was known internationally as serial violator of human rights. His 2017 election loss to Hassan Rouhani was blamed, in part, on audio recordings underlining Raisi’s role in thousands of summary executions carried out decades ago in connection with a fatwa issued by Khomeini following the conclusion of the Iran-Iraq war. In 1988, while serving on what came to be known as “death committees,” Raisi condemned scores of political prisoners without even the trappings of due process.

As president and foreign minister, Raisi and Amir Abdollahian marked a stark contrast with their predecessors. Rouhani and Mohammad Javad Zarif, both relative moderates, pursued something that vaguely resembled diplomatic relations with Washington, an effort that culminated in the star-crossed 2015 nuclear deal.

Raisi’s election in 2021 (the result of a vote criticized for irregularities) marked the consolidation of political power in the hands of hardliners and the (likely permanent) sidelining of moderates. Amir Abdollahian maintained a close rapport with the IRGC. Whereas Zarif once described a fraught relationship with the late Qassem Soleimani, Amir Abdollahian was an ally of the general’s. To be an ally of Soleimani’s was to be in his pocket.

If anything, the death of Raisi and Amir Abdollahian will increase the regime’s sense of vulnerability and reduce the government’s already low tolerance for any sort of domestic dissent. During his second year in office, Raisi brutally quashed mass demonstrations against a morality crackdown he spearheaded. By all accounts, the government became more repressive during his tenure consistent with his mentor-protégé relationship with Khamenei.

That said, it wouldn’t necessarily be accurate to suggest Tehran became more insular during Raisi’s presidency. Most notably, he and Amir Abdollahian fostered rapprochement with the Saudis (with a little encouragement from Xi Jinping). Amir Abdollahian actually visited Riyadh last year, where he participated in an on-camera show of quasi-sociability with Prince Faisal bin Farhan.

As expected, Mohammad Mokhber, Raisi’s first VP, was named interim president. Mokhber’s a military medic-turned businessman. He ran several of Khamenei’s financing vehicles and slush funds, most of which are sanctioned, including Setad. Despite his mutually beneficial (and, one imagines, highly lucrative) relationship with Khamenei, Mokhber won’t become president. And I doubt seriously the regime will allow the candidacy of anyone who fits even a loose definition of moderate.

Amir Abdollahian’s deputy, Ali Bagheri Kani, will serve as a “caretaker” foreign minister. He ran the 2013 presidential campaign of Saeed Jalili, a conservative who strongly supports Iran’s nuclear program. Bagheri Kani has also back-channeled with the US in discussions aimed at defusing tensions in the Red Sea, Iraq and, of course, Gaza.

There were (far) more questions than answers on Monday. Raisi’s death overshadowed pretty much every other major news story from New York to London to Tehran to Beijing and back again. I suppose Mojtaba Khamenei (the son) is now the odds-on favorite to become the next Supreme Leader, but anyone who tells you they have special insight into that succession planning process is lying. To call it opaque would be to vastly understate the case.

The regime will likely close ranks and circle the wagons. The scope of Khamenei’s losses since 2020 — inclusive of commanders and operatives in Syria, Lebanon and Iraq — is staggering. Iran suffered its worst terrorist attack since the Revolution in January, when ISIS bombed a memorial procession for Soleimani, prompting a multi-directional missile volley which saw the IRGC strike targets in Syria and Iraq (clients states) and Pakistan. Just three months later, Khamenei had to chance a direct war with Israel to save face after the IDF assassinated Mohamad Reza Zahedi, the most senior IRGC commander killed since Soleimani in 2020.

Tehran’s “Axis of Resistance” is a patronage network and Khamenei’s the big man. Tehran’s the power center, the source of funding and on and on. If Iran’s unstable, so’s the whole thing. That network survived Soleimani’s death, but it doesn’t exist as a confederation of allied militia without the regime, and the shakier things look in Tehran, the greater the existential threat to those groups.

Remember, governments like Khamenei’s (and Vladimir Putin’s and, in some respects, Xi’s) are defined by a paradox: They’re strong but fragile. As any political scientist who studies autocratic regimes will tell you, typically in exactly these terms, every day’s existential for these kinds of governments.

On Monday, both Putin and Xi expressed their condolences to Iran. “Raisi’s tragic death is a great loss to the Iranian people,” Xi said, adding that the Chinese people “lost a good friend.” Putin, in a letter addressed directly to Khamenei, described Raisi as “a wonderful person.”