The Cult of the Martyr: How Iran's Regime Machine Turns Tragedy into Theology
Ebrahim Raisi died in a helicopter crash on 19 May 2024. By the morning of 19 May 2026, Iranian state media was hosting a book-launch event in Tehran dedicated to what it calls the "Model of Religious Governance" — an official template for governance supposedly drawn from Raisi's abbreviated presidency. The event, reported exclusively via Tasnim News Agency, was billed as a "media event" for examining "the indicators of the model of theocratic rule in the biography of martyr Ayatollah Raisi." The framing was unmistakable: grief transmuted into doctrine.
What makes this noteworthy is not the grief itself — mourning rituals are universal — but the speed and institutionalisation with which the Iranian system has moved to sacralise a president who, eighteen months before his death, had yet to consolidate a distinct political legacy of his own. Raisi was chosen by the supreme leader. He governed largely in the shadow of that mandate. And yet the machinery of the Islamic Republic has, in the space of two years, erected a theological framework around a man whose primary biographical distinction may well have been being in the wrong helicopter on the wrong mountain. The book is not a monument. It is a political instrument.
The Architecture of Martyrdom
The terminology in the Tasnim reporting is precise and revealing. Raisi is consistently referred to not as "the late president" but as "martyr Ayatollah Raisi" or "Shahid Raisi" — Shahid being the Arabic word for witness, but in Iranian political vocabulary carrying the specific connotation of a martyr killed in the service of the Islamic project. Safarharandi, the speaker at the event, described Raisi as having "never entered the treacherous path of dual sovereignty." The phrase is doing heavy ideological work. "Dual sovereignty" is a doctrinal term in Iranian political theology, referring to the idea that temporal and spiritual authority might operate as parallel rather than integrated systems. To say Raisi never embraced it is to say he was orthodox in the deepest constitutional sense — that he understood the supreme leader's authority as total and non-negotiable.
This matters because Raisi's position within the Iranian power structure was never fully settled. As president, he headed one branch of government. As a close associate of the supreme leader, he was understood to be a candidate for succession. The "dual sovereignty" framing is a posthumous argument: Raisi understood the system correctly, therefore his version of it is the correct version. The book is less a biography than a canonisation brief.
Why This Now?
Iranian presidents have died in office before — Mohammad Ali Rajaei in 1981, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani in 2017 — but neither prompted an immediate theological construction project of this magnitude. The urgency in the current effort likely reflects the succession question that remains open. Ayatollah Khamenei is 86 years old. The next supreme leader will need a legitimising narrative, and the institutions that stand to gain or lose from that transition are already investing in frameworks that will serve their preferred candidate. Raisi's mythology, carefully constructed and centrally promoted, provides one such framework — a figure who embodied loyalty without ambition, obedience without negotiation.
The phrasing at the event that the late president "corrected the view of some agents on the position of leadership" is particularly notable. It implies that prior to Raisi, some within the system held incorrect views about the supreme leader's role. That correction — according to this narrative — was accomplished before his death. The book freeze-frames that achievement, preserving it as institutional memory against whatever internal debates are currently underway. This is not nostalgia. It is operational political infrastructure.
The Enemy as Narrative Engine
Safarharandi's remarks included a claim that "the enemy is abusing the competition of government institutions" and that Raisi "defeated this method of the enemy." The phrasing is characteristic of Iranian state media discourse, where external adversaries serve as a constant legitimising foil. But there is a structural function here that goes beyond propaganda. By positioning Raisi's governance as having defeated an enemy strategy — the manipulation of institutional competition — the narrative implicitly argues that the current system, post-Raisi, remains under that threat. The martyred president becomes the reference point for correct practice, a standard against which the living must measure themselves.
This is a known technique in authoritarian consolidation: the construction of a leader whose death paradoxically increases their authority by removing them from the messy compromises of governance. Raisi, had he lived, would have been subject to the same political calculations, factional pressures, and failures that bedevil any president. Dead, he can only be right.
What the Ritual Reveals
The book-launch event in Tehran is, on its surface, a routine feature of authoritarian systems that invest heavily in the symbolism of leadership. The Islamic Republic has form here — Khomeini was immortalised not merely as founder but as architect of an entire constitutional order; Rafsanjani's death prompted extensive doctrinal elaboration; even less central figures receive formalised commemorative treatment. But the Raisi project has a particular quality of urgency that distinguishes it from the memorialisation of natural political deaths.
Raisi's presidency was short, his international profile defined largely by the crackdowns associated with the Woman, Life, Freedom protests of 2022 and 2024, and his domestic economic record mixed. To build a governance "model" around such a figure requires either extraordinary ideological commitment or extraordinary political utility — and probably both. The book being unveiled on the second anniversary of his death suggests the timing is as deliberate as the content. Two years is long enough for grief to stabilise into ritual, and short enough that the underlying succession question has not yet resolved. The regime is laying doctrine before the question arrives.
The political theology on display in Tehran this week tells us less about Ebrahim Raisi — a figure whose actual governance remain contested and whose presidency produced no transformative legislative legacy — than about the system that now invokes him. Authoritarian systems that invest heavily in the mythology of individual leaders tend to be managing internal tensions those myths are designed to contain. The book is a signal, not a eulogy. Whether it succeeds as political infrastructure depends on a succession battle that remains, for now, unresolved.
This desk covered the Raisi mythology-building effort primarily through Iranian state media channels. The framing reflects regime-generated narrative rather than independent corroboration. Readers seeking verification of specific doctrinal claims should consult Iranian opposition sources, academic Iran specialists, and where available, documented evidence of Raisi's actual policy record during his presidency.
Wire provenance
This editorial synthesis draws on the following public wire/social posts:
- https://t.me/tasnimnews_en/38754
- https://t.me/tasnimnews_en/38750
- https://t.me/tasnimnews_en/38748
- https://t.me/tasnimnews_en/38746