Iran’s Succession Woes, ICC Angers Israel, South Africa’s Election, and More

MCMAHON:
In the coming week, Iran prepares for snap elections after the death of President Raisi. Israel responds to ICC warrant requests for its prime minister and defense minister. And, South Africa holds general elections. It's May 23rd, 2024 and time for The World Next Week. I'm Bob McMahon.

ROBBINS:
And I'm Carla Anne Robbins. Bob, let's start with Iran. The death in a helicopter crash of Iran's president has raised major questions about its future power structure. Not only was Raisi president, he was believed to be on the shortlist to succeed Iran's supreme leader who was eighty-five and reportedly in ill health. What should we expect from Iran's presidential elections, which are now scheduled for June 28th? And Iranians are so disaffected from their leaders that much to the government's embarrassment only 41 percent of voters turned out for legislative elections in March, if you believe those numbers.

MCMAHON:
Yes, there's a lot of interesting maneuvering going on to say the least, Carla, in terms of both internally but also messaging to the world. There's desire to show that despite its heavy sanctioning, for example, Iran is getting all sorts of state leaders from across the board coming. That's a mixed picture right now. And by the way, with the supreme leader's health, it's one of those cases where we've been talking about the ill health of Khamenei for I think maybe fifteen years now. So it's not to say that at eighty-five he's going to be around a lot longer, but I'm not sure anything's imminent as of yet. At the same time, Iranians themselves have been talking about it in their power chambers about succession process, and you're absolutely right, Raisi was considered a suitable stand-in. Khamenei himself served as president before he rose to supreme leader. It's interesting also to note that Khamenei became president after the terrorism attack killed his predecessor. So interesting precedence and other things going on in Iran.

But the smart Iran watchers that are out there, and we've seen a lot of really good commentary analysis in the last few days, have basically said, "Look, Raisi was a bit of a cipher"—that's our colleague, Ray Takeyh has said that—but he was very suitable for the supreme leader's purposes in terms of he was not pushing back and coming up with his own agenda as other presidents had on certain areas, whether it would be a nuclear program deal with the West, for example, or some sort of internal reform effort or whatever. Different presidents have tried different things. Raisi was doing the loyal bidding of the supreme leader. He was in lockstep on all major policy areas and in crisis areas, including the crackdown on the protests that followed the death and custody of Mahsa Amini for wearing the hijab, or not wearing it correctly. And that was a really big protest. People might forget, but the crackdown was brutal.

Raisi was also, and this conjures up the phrase the banality of evil, for all his low-key subservience. He was a very loyal henchman back in the late eighties when as a judicial official had reportedly called for the deaths of more than five thousand people. So as the reporting coming out of Iran is showing some scenes of state summoned the mourning in various cities, but also there have been reports of people expressing a bit of relief or even amusement at his death partly because he had such a bad reputation in his harshness on the opposition in terms of the crackdown in other steps.

There's not going to be stepping into the position or to the candidacy for position. You're not going to see by all accounts any shining reform figure or even pragmatist to use a term that Iran watchers like to use. It very much seems like there's going to be another hardliner or stepping in. And the question is whether the establishment such as it is that's involved in vetting and allowing candidates to run is going to pick someone that they also think is suitable for supreme leader. Some of the front runners mentioned so far are the current parliament speaker, Mohammed Bagher Ghalibaf, and the judiciary chief, Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Eje'i. We'll see who emerges.

The country has to have elections within fifty days according to Iranian law. So the powers that be are scrambling to line up a suitable list of candidates. And it's also worth noting back to your point about these low turnout at elections, they go through the motions of holding elections and then pick a lineup of pale imitations. The chances are the turnout is going to be pretty low. Iran has for all of its reputation as a malevolent force in the region and the head of the axis of resistance, it's got a public that actually is yearning for change by all accounts and it's got a highly wired public that is following events in the region and in the world and is not going to show up and vote for somebody who's going to just perpetuate the process. That doesn't mean that they're not going to go through with this and pick someone and line up the state organs to applaud that person, but it just shows that the regime is facing a bit of a challenge in terms of its messaging, in terms of its stature.

And we're going to watch closely who emerges as candidates, how they go forward with this process. And it's happening at a time when there's, as we've talked about many times recently in this podcast, there's a great deal of ferment in the region, whether you talk about Iran's support for Hamas and its axis of resistance in both attacking Israeli as well as Western targets. You've got Iranian aid to Russia, a very, very much stepped up aid on the drone front in its war with Ukraine. And it's been facing problems with its bordering regions as well, and we talked about attacks against restive forces in Pakistan even. So there is a lot on the table here, but I think we're going to try to see a regime that tries to control the process as much as possible and come up with a favorable figure that the establishment can accept.

ROBBINS:
Favorable figure that the establishment can accept is really intriguing because they seem very concerned during the legislative elections and they kept predicting there was going to be a larger turnout. And it's really not so much a question of free and fair elections. It's not free and fair choice of candidates. I mean they get to choose who runs and they've been shrinking and shrinking and shrinking the list of who can participate, not even reformers. They don't even let former presidents play. They keep shrinking the number of people who can play, which leads to more and more alienation of the general public. And the public in the past in Iran has either demonstrated after elections because they think they're stolen, or they're voting with not voting.

So I think one of the things that I'm going to be watching for is to see who they let run. And they're going to signal something with this, which is either we're going to choose someone who seems a little more interesting because we do care about the alienation of the general public or we're so frightened, we're so much turned in on ourselves that we're just going to go for the most conservative, most inward looking of our inward looking group and who cares if only 32 percent of the voters turn out. And so I think that's one of the things to look for. I think we've seen in the past that governments get even more and more inward looking. Their survival rate is not so great.

MCMAHON:
No, as I said, it's a roiling neighborhood. The regime would like to show solidarity and stability and maintenance of the status quo. And it's been mentioned in many recent reports as part of this new tide of the momentum with this new tide of authoritarians from Russia and China and North Korea and Iran. And yet for the reasons you pointed out Carla, things are still pretty hollow when you look under the hood. And Iran goes through the democratic motions, because it actually has a process that it needs to follow. And even the selection of the supreme leader, that's not an open vote by any means. There's a chamber of elites who themselves are vetted and at the end, choosing. There's been talk about Khomeini's fifty-five-year-old son Mojtaba being a possible contender. And then there's also a great deal of concern about dynastic politics and this is what the revolution got away from when it overthrew the Shah and so forth.

So there's lots of roiling going on. I even recall in the controversial elections back in, I think 2009, when Ahmadinejad was elected under really fishy circumstances and brutal crackdown on opposition figures. The house arrest of two other leading candidates and Ahmadinejad was seen as the favorable candidate for the regime and he ended up being a little bit of a thorn on the side to the supreme leader too. There was some problems there, even though he was certainly not any sort of enlightened figure. It's certainly concerning others.

So this is a complicated country and even with this regime seeming to hold all the levers, it is going to be revealing on who emerges and then how we look at what they mean for the future of the country in a position that has some levers. The presidential position has some importance, but the supreme leader at the end of the day is called that for a reason.

Carla, let's stay in the region and pivot to Israel. This past Monday, the International Criminal Court's lead prosecutor, Karim Khan, requested arrest warrants in a surprising announcement for Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant as well as Hamas leaders, Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Deif and Ismail Haniyeh on accusations of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Now, it might take some time for judges to decide whether to issue the warrants or not, but the request has certainly fed into what was already a tense situation domestically, and there have already been divisions in Netanyahu's war cabinet, not over the ICC warrants, but over what's going on with the efforts to get the hostages released to deal with an end game in Gaza. We've heard announcements on other fronts that I think you'll probably get into from European capitals. Carla, what is Israel facing at this point with this new announced warrants from the ICC prosecutor?

ROBBINS:
So Bob, as you said, this is a request for arrest warrants and that's what we would call an indictment, but it still needs to be approved by a panel of three ICC judges. And this is a process that could take two to three months or it could come sooner. But the impact inside Israel and internationally was immediate with Israelis, including some of Netanyahu's most vocal critics rallying around him. The United States and many, but not all European countries, the French and notably the Germans, have expressed their support for the court. But many other countries who have become increasingly critical of Netanyahu's conduct of the war in Gaza also denounced the prosecutor's actions. The U.S. called it outrageous and particularly any suggestion of equivalence between Israel and Hamas.

And Bibi was predictably as defiant as ever. In a video statement, he said that Khan's action would not stop Israel from waging its "just war against Hamas" until it was won. And he painted it as an attack on all Israeli and especially Israeli soldiers. And I think there's been a considerable resonance with the Israeli public on that. Whether this is a temporary bump for Netanyahu, there's a great deal of debate. Certainly things were not great for him before this. Last week, his defense minister, Yoav Gallant, who was also indicted, publicly demanded the Netanyahu outline a clear strategy for Gaza after the war and immediately pledged that Israel not establish a military government in Gaza. Benny Gantz, a former military chief who's really a big player and who leads the National Unity Party and who only joined the government after October 7th, backed Gallant's call and also threatened to resign from the cabinet if a new strategic plan for the war isn't decided by June 8th. He gave him a deadline and he wants a strategy to secure the release of the hostages. He wants Netanyahu to address the future governance of Gaza and a bunch of other things. And he warned Netanyahu, now keep in mind this was before the ICC thing, "if you choose the path of fanatics and lead the entire nation to the abyss, we will be forced to quit the government."

And while Gantz and Gallant and opposition leader Yair Lapid all denounced the ICC move, Reuters is reporting that two of Gantz's aides say the retired generals threat to quit the cabinet if Netanyahu does not commit to some sort of plan for Gaza in Israel by June 8th still stands. So we will see how long this bump lasts. If Gantz quits, Netanyahu would still have a slim majority, but it gets slimmer and slimmer and slimmer and I think the bump is going to be temporary, but we'll have to see. And meanwhile, Bob, as you mentioned, Israel's international isolation continues to grow. On Wednesday, Ireland, Spain and Norway announced that they would recognize the Palestinian state on May 28th. So we'll see how long the bump continues.

MCMAHON:
Carla, on that last point, it's interesting to see this move forward with the vote to recognize the Palestinian state because it's been hard...One of the things that's been borne out as we look into this war and the future of the Palestinian people and the two-state solution and so forth is just who are the Palestinians that represent Palestine so to speak. You've got Hamas in a full-fledged war and Israel is vowing to eliminate them. You've got the Palestinian Authority and Fatah, which is a rival of Hamas, running in this rump state, but it's hard to see what is, even if there was a groundswell of recognition and so forth, what are they recognizing exactly and what needs to be done? So there seems to be so many epic problems that are going to be a long time in resolving.

ROBBINS:
I think the thinking of countries that are recognizing a Palestinian state, obviously they're not talking about Hamas, they're talking about the PA such as it is. What the Americans say is that recognition is supposed to be part of the negotiations for a two-state solution. What these other countries are saying is that there have been no negotiations for years and years about two-state solution, and Netanyahu says that he no longer believes in it. So this is an attempt to try to move the process forward, to try to incentivize the Palestinians to talk, the PA to talk, and certainly to try to pressure Bibi to talk. It's symbolic right now and an act of quote, "Solidarity with the Palestinians in the midst of this war." But I think it increases Israel's isolation and so we'll see how that plays out.

Meanwhile, of course, the U.S Congress is getting ready, particularly the House, Speaker Johnson is getting ready to invite Netanyahu to address a joint session of Congress, and that is an act of solidarity on the part of the Republicans with Netanyahu, but also an attempt to jam the Democrats. And so isolation, politicization, there's a lot games being played in Washington about this as well.

MCMAHON:
So the ICC certainly knew what it was getting into, but I'm not sure they know where this is going to end up.

ROBBINS:
Well, you pointed out that this was publicly announced and our colleague David Scheffer spoke about that. We did that media briefing the other day and he said it's very rare to do this in public. And Khan was trying to, I think, send a very clear message to both the Israelis and to Hamas insisting there's no equivalence that what they're doing right now has to stop. This is supposed to be a deterrent, but the backlash...And it certainly has propped up Bibi at home for now.

MCMAHON:
And finally, we should of course note that the situation as reported from Gaza for civilians is increasingly dire. The U.S. is trying to expedite the functioning of this portable pier that was built and that apparently has not dispersed that many goods because there was, I think some problems with the way foodstuffs could be actually transported off the pier into the population. So it's one problem after another there.

ROBBINS:
And as important as the pier may be, it's nowhere near enough for what needs to be gotten in and the crossings are not delivering the aid that needs to be gotten in. And one of the crimes that the ICC is alleging is using starvation. So pretty horrible situation there.

Bob, next Wednesday, the South Africans are going to vote for a new national Assembly, which will then go on to elect the new president. The African National Congress Party has been in power since the end of apartheid. However, with all the problems there, high rates of poverty, unemployment, violent crime, government corruption and power outages, is the ANC's power fading?

MCMAHON:
So that is the question of the moment, Carla. A lot of ANC watchers have seen a definite diminution of support and just frustration and the standard voter exasperation with a party that has not delivered. This is obviously the dominant post-apartheid party going back thirty years. But if you take some charts and graphs and look at economic benchmarks just for one example, you're not looking at good trends and you're looking at pretty alarming ones. I mean, just the violent crime issue, South Africa is up there with some of the worst countries in terms of deaths per population, per one hundred thousand of population, just for example. But also there's a raggedness in the country that there's outages that people have become accustomed to in terms of load-bearing outages because the electricity has become a real problem and all sorts of infrastructure problems. It has been noted by some familiar with South Africa that, it went from for all its grave problems under apartheid thirty years ago, it went from that time nearly first world country to a third world country in terms of its public goods and so forth.

And so this hurts the ANC, but the ANC is still seen as likely going to squeak by and that means another final term for current president Cyril Ramaphosa. But then a question is what are they delivering on and what are the opposition parties? What do they bring to the table? Let's just go through a few of them in terms of the challengers. The Democratic Alliance known as DA and seen as a pro-business party, they pulled about 20 percent the last time around. They seemed to be around the same strength this time. To the other side of the coin, you have the Economic Freedom Fighters, EFF, and they call for radical economic change including nationalizing industries. You have a group known by the acronym MK, which is basically a vehicle for former president Jacob Zuma and his supporters, and he has a lot of supporters. Although the country's Constitutional Court has ruled that Zuma cannot stand for election to the National Assembly due to a prior criminal conviction. His photo, however, will be all over some of the ballots for MK.

And Zuma has been a thorn in the side of the government. He was formerly a longtime ANC champion, but he had to resign in 2018 because of corruption allegations and really rapidly declined confidence in his leadership. And so you have Ramaphosa trying to stitch together some sense of momentum so that he can rule for another term and he can try to start repairing some of the things that are going wrong with the country domestically. And you have another electoral exercise that's showing the will of the South African people to vote or to have protest votes and to speak out even while they're feeling more helpless about having a chance to sway the country's really disastrous trends economically.

ROBBINS:
Two questions.

MCMAHON:
Yes?

ROBBINS:
I'll start with the domestic one first. Are they going to have to form a coalition, and if they form a coalition, with whom? And how much would that change what they do domestically?

MCMAHON:
Yeah, that's the question. I think if they do get close to the 50 percent mark, they will not, but there is some sense that they could cobble together enough like minded forces to be able to rule via a coalition. The question is whether some of these parties I mentioned do better than expected and have an ability to form some sort of a bloc or to thwart Ramaphosa for another term as president, for example. Because the party or coalition needs that 50 percent which is 201 seats to be able to secure the president either to renew Ramaphosa or to choose another president. So that is the huge question mark. Those are going to be the first findings that we're going to look for after the vote on May 29th and then we'll see.

Because the ANC has been dominant so long, it has been the post-apartheid party in power, this is new territory. So we're not sure what other horse trading might look like in the South African context. And again, some of these parties are so different, it's not clear how many of them can make common cause if they had to, all of which is again and again using the power of incumbency. The ANC has provided certain sweeteners to certain segments of the population, and then there's the sense that they can get to the basic level they need to continue to govern. So that's where that stands at this point.

ROBBINS:
And most of the time these days when we talk about South Africa, it's about its foreign policy. It's very tight with Moscow these days and it's non-aligned at the same time positions on things like Ukraine.

MCMAHON:
It's a proud member of the BRICS group, which is seemingly growing, at least in voice.

ROBBINS:
Yes, and increasingly tight with China, trading enormously with China. And South Africa brought the genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice. Does that matter in something like an election like this? Certainly, it's got significant standing globally, which potentially could be a source of pride in the ANC governments.

MCMAHON:
Yeah, for all of the domestic ferment, we have not seen any major messaging about taking the country in a different direction or taking it away from its growing alignment with these fellow BRICS countries, for example, Carla. So it's not seen even if the ANC is diminished further or diminished to such a point where it needs to get into some sort of a coalition and engage in some trade-offs. That doesn't seem like it's going to affect its trajectory in foreign policy, which is to stay independent, to stay this leader of the Global South, to continue to do business with China and Russia, if not embrace them and take its own path and not feel like it's under the sway of Western countries.

But it's a country that would really like to have more U.S. investment in addition to Chinese investment and it would like to have a healthy business climate. But the sting of corruption among other things and just the lack of confidence in the current ruling apparatus is hurting it internationally and so we'll have to see. All things being equal, it appears we should still have a, at least a dominant regional South Africa as the continent on a whole continues to go through its own roiling changes.

Well, Carla, we've talked ourselves into the audience figure of the week portion of the podcast. This is where listeners vote every Tuesday and Wednesday at CFR_org's Instagram story. The audience this week pretty vigorously chose a figure related to Taiwan, which is the newly inaugurated president Lai Ching-te. China has not been a fan of his, shall we say. He made some statesman-like comments at his inauguration earlier this week. But China has also responded with some stepped up activities in the region. So are we seeing a new president that will be triggering China further or what should we look for?

ROBBINS:
Triggering.

MCMAHON:
Yes.

ROBBINS:
No snowflakes here. Bob, neither side was pulling any punches this week. In his inaugural address on Monday, Lai insisted that the two sides are quote, "Not subordinate to each other." And even as he said he hoped to hold talks with Beijing, something that has not happened for quite a while, China's unlikely to exceed to his conditions, starting with accepting Taiwan as a sovereign equal. They don't like that equal notion. Lai also said his countrymen must not, quote, "Harbor any delusions, even if we were to accept China's proposals in their entirety, and for sake of sovereignty, China's attempts to swallow up Taiwan would not disappear." So there was a certain statesman-like thing, but this guy ain't backing down. And immediately afterwards, on Tuesday, China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi called Lai, quote, "disgraceful," and declared that all "Taiwan independent separatists will be nailed to the pillar of shame in history and that nothing will stop China from bringing Taiwan back to the motherland."

And if rhetoric was clearly not enough for Beijing, today, on Thursday, the Chinese launched two days of military drills. They named it Joint Sword-2024A, which would suggest that it's not going to be the last one they're going to be doing. And the PLA said the drills were intended to, quote, "Serve as a strong punishment for the separatist acts of Taiwan independence forces," and this is including the army, the navy, the air force, the rocket forces. And what they're doing...And they put out a map as they're surrounding the island. And Taiwanese officials had a briefing on Thursday and said so far, Chinese planes and ships have stayed out of their territorial waters and airspace. But we will see China was no fan of Lai's predecessor and former boss, the outgoing president.

It appears that Beijing is especially antagonistic toward him, focusing repeatedly on a comment he made seven years ago when he described himself as, quote, "A pragmatic worker for Taiwanese independence." And I was reading his supporters say that he meant self-rule rather than independence, but China is not persuaded by that and they keep using it, including on Monday as part of its long diatribe. It described him as quote, "A worker for Taiwanese independence." So things, I'm not expecting to calm down. Do I expect them to come to blows? One of the great and frightening guessing games of our times. Right now, Xi Jinping seems more focused on rebuilding his economy and lowering tensions with the U.S. and Europe. So let's hope that those priorities keep the sparring at the rhetorical level mainly.

MCMAHON:
Well, and speaking of economic things, among the many reasons why a bigger move of China towards the island, let's say, in asserting control or an attempt to assert control, has to do with the outsized role that Taiwan still plays in making the world's most advanced silicon chips and semiconductors. And even with the U.S. ramp up of its own domestic industry and plans to further do that, it's going to be a number of years before the world is really able to diversify the production of these. So there's a lot riding on this for many reasons.

ROBBINS:
And then of course we have this whole "Is it China, is it Europe?" debate that's once again developing as we go into the presidential election. I saw that Bridge Colby has an op-ed in the Financial Times, and he is shortlisted to be something if President Trump is re-elected and he's long been arguing that we shouldn't have focused on Ukraine, we should be focused on Taiwan. You should expect to hear more of that. Not that President Biden is not hugely focused on China, but you'll be hearing more of that from the Trump team. So expect Taiwan to be at the center of some of these political debates going through to the primary. And then the money for Ukraine also had money for Taiwan, although Taiwan is saying that there's a big backlog in aid that's coming to them. So this whole Europe versus Taiwan debate will probably play out somewhat, although it's I think a false trade-off, will play out during the presidential campaign.

MCMAHON:
And we'll seemingly hear less and less of a policy known as strategic ambiguity and maybe more forthright expressions of support for Taiwan, shall we say.

And that's our look at the world next week. Here's some other stories to keep an eye on. Chancellor Olaf Scholz hosts French President Emmanuel Macron for a state visit, the first such visit in twenty-four years. And, South Korea, Japan and China will hold a trilateral summit in Seoul.

ROBBINS:
Please subscribe to The World Next Week on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts, and leave us a review while you're at it. We appreciate the feedback. If you'd like to reach out, please email us at [email protected]. The publications mentioned in this episode, as well as a transcript of our conversation, are listed on the podcast page for The World Next Week on CFR.org. Please note that opinions expressed on the world next week are solely those of the host, not of CFR, which takes no institutional positions on matters of policy.

Today's program was produced by Ester Fang, who really did incredible work this week, with director of Podcasting Gabrielle Sierra. Special thanks to Sinet Adous and Kenadee Mangus. Welcome Kennedy for her research assistance. Our theme music is provided by Markus Zakaria. This is Carla Robbins saying so long.

MCMAHON:
And this is Bob McMahon saying goodbye and stay careful out there.