Human rights attorney Amal Clooney was part of the team that convinced the International Criminal Court to charge both Israeli and Hamas leaders with war crimes.

Clooney said the ICC's prosecutor asked her over 4 months ago to join the team analyzing evidence of suspected war crimes and crimes against humanity in Israel and Gaza, she wrote in a post on the website of Clooney Foundation for Justice, which she co-founded with her husband, actor George Clooney.

The findings from Amal Clooney and other experts led the ICC to announce on Monday that it was seeking arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, along with several others from both sides of the conflict.

"We unanimously conclude that there are reasonable grounds to believe that Hamas leaders Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Deif and Ismail Haniyeh have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity, including hostage-taking, murder and crimes of sexual violence," Clooney wrote on CFJ's website.

"We unanimously conclude that there are reasonable grounds to believe that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity including starvation as a method of warfare, murder, persecution and extermination," Clooney continued.

Mr. Raisi was associated with some of the Islamic Republic’s most repressive episodes. He played a key role as a judge on a four-person panel that came to be known as the “death committee,” which in 1988 led to the swift executions of some 5,000 prisoners. Mr. Raisi also presided over the brutal crackdown on nationwide protests that were triggered in 2022 by the killing of a young Kurdish woman by what’s known as the morality police for allegedly not fully covering her hair. Rights groups estimate that more than 500 died.

The Tehran Times announced the news of the president’s death with a banner headline, “Martyrdom in the line of duty,” and official media trumpeted Mr. Raisi’s achievements. But there was also some celebration – even fireworks in some Kurdish areas of western Iran – and countless jokes and memes mocking the late president on social media.

Indeed, inside Iran an increasing portion of the population has been systematically disenfranchised by an elite hard-line minority, which controls every lever of power and has violently demonstrated that it brooks no dissent.

Outside Iran, the country’s indirect shadow war against Israel and American interests in the Middle East – a war waged via Iran-backed “Axis of Resistance” regional forces – turned into a risky direct confrontation last month. Iran launched more than 300 missiles and drones at Israel from its own soil April 13 in retaliation for an Israeli strike against Iranian generals in Syria.

While analysts note that conservative rule in Iran has been carefully solidified in recent years, the cost has been high in terms of regime popularity.

Meanwhile, the upcoming emergency presidential vote, which must be held within 50 days, could ultimately have a bearing on who will succeed Mr. Khamenei.

“The impact of Raisi’s death on leadership succession will be most acutely felt in how Khamenei approaches the early elections,” says Mohammad Ali Shabani, editor of Amwaj.media, a London-based news site focusing on Iran, Iraq, and the Arabian Peninsula countries.

For decades, Mr. Khamenei cast Iran’s high election turnouts as evidence of the Islamic Revolution’s popular mandate, and often mocked foreign elections’ low turnout as proof of indifference, says Mr. Shabani. In Iran, voter turnout has dropped since 2000, including a record low of 8% in Tehran on May 10, in a parliamentary runoff vote.

The death of Mr. Raisi may present an opportunity to “reverse course, to get voters back into the political process,” says Mr. Shabani. But that would also require a strategic decision, and for Mr. Khamenei to fight off the very hard-line forces that he initially allowed to stamp out reform politics altogether.

“A pro-reform resurgence in the polls will help shift dynamics on leadership succession,” says Mr. Shabani. “Conversely, their total sidelining from power once again will indicate the future [hard-line] direction of Iran under the Islamic Republic.”