In their three years in power, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and his equally hardline Foreign Minister, Hossein Amirabdollahian, did everything they could to consolidate the “Axis of Resistance” against the United States and Israel.
They financed Hamas and Hezbollah. They armed the Houthis and fed militia intelligence fueling attacks on cargo ships in the Red Sea. They cracked down on dissent at home, launched Iran’s first direct missile attacks on Israel after Israel killed several Iranian generals, and turned Iran into a “threshold” nuclear state that could quickly produce fuel for three or four bombs.
But despite all those aggressive moves, the two men, both killed in a helicopter crash in the mountains near Azerbaijan on Sunday, were also cautious.
