Geo-Strategy #7: Iran's Succession Crisis: The Helicopter Crash, Game Theory, and the IRGC's Play for Absolute Power

This episode applies Game Theory analysis to investigate the mysterious helicopter crash of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi. While an accident caused by bad weather and an aging aircraft is considered the most likely explanation, the episode explores alternative scenarios of assassination, potentially orchestrated by foreign adversaries like the United States or Israel, or by internal enemies within Iran.

The analysis focuses on the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a powerful internal actor who may have had motivations to eliminate Raisi. His potential rise to Supreme Leader threatened the IRGC's monopoly on economic and political power, making it plausible they acted to ensure Mostafa Khamenei, the current Ayatollah’s son, would succeed as Supreme Leader and continue the IRGC’s extremist, anti-Western agenda.