Body of Ebrahim Raisi taken to Tehran before state ceremony

Iranian state TV reported on large crowds gathering to pay their respects, while behind the scenes a power struggle was under way as the regime attempts to unify around a single candidate in a snap election provisionally scheduled for 28 June.

In the unlikely event of no single candidate winning a majority of votes in what is likely to be a highly managed election, a runoff would be held on 5 July.

Raisi was killed along with the foreign minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, and seven others when the helicopter they were travelling in crashed in thick fog in the mountainous north-east of Iran. Video has been broadcast in Iran of distraught rescuers reaching the scene of the crash in thick woodland and discovering no sign of life.

The Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, blamed US sanctions for making the Iranian civilian air industry unsafe.

Official news channels conveyed the impression of a country drowning in grief and sorrow, but at the same time resilient and capable of overcoming such a setback. Dissidents within Iran gave a picture of Tehran residents quitting the capital to drive north for a holiday.

The 88-strong Assembly of Experts, the body that upon the death of the supreme leader decides the successor, met on Tuesday to elect a 93-year-old cleric, Mohammad Ali Movahedi Kermani, as chair. A seat set aside for Raisi was filled with flowers and a photograph of him.

As a result, with half the electorate apparently turning their backs on guided Iranian democracy, the power struggle in the regime is no longer between reformists and hardliners but within conservative factions.

The recent parliamentary elections saw advances for the ultra-conservative Front of Islamic Revolution Stability, led by Hamid Rasaee.

The most likely successor to Raisi at present is the current speaker, Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, but his faction did not do well in parliamentary elections and he has been dogged by allegations of corruption.

Saeed Jalili, a former nuclear negotiator and secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, stood aside for Raisi in the 2021 election and is said to be eager to stand. But he is seen as extreme and unpredictable by other conservatives, who will try to persuade the supreme leader not to back him.

The idea of Jalili holding the Iranian presidency while Donald Trump, if re-elected, is in the White House fills some diplomats with horror.