MIDEAST LEADERSHIP CRISIS

Iran searched for a lost President hours before war-crime charges were sought against heads of Israel and Hamas

- KARL VICK

IF THE MIDDLE EAST IS A PUZZLE, IT'S ONE THAT grew even harder to imagine ever clicking together as the evening of May 19 gave way to May 20. In the space of 24 hours, the President of Iran was killed, and the Prime Minister of Israel learned that a warrant for his arrest for war crimes and crimes against humanity was sought by the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), who also wanted warrants for leaders of Hamas. Even before Saudi Arabia announced its elderly King was gravely ill, the point had come home: nearly eight months after Oct. 7, the essential question in the Middle East is leadership.

In Iran, more than fog obscured the helicopter crash that left President Ebrahim Raisi and seven others dead. Though the default explanation traced the cause to an aviation fleet stunted by decades of U.S. sanctions, conspiracy theories regarded that as a handy cover for either Mossad-in retaliation for Iran's April 13 assault on Israel-or bloody-minded rivals of Raisi in the competition to succeed 85-year-old Ali Khamenei in Iran's top job. His title, Supreme Leader, says it all.

Unlike General Qasem Soleimani, whose popularity across Iranian society made his 2020 assassination by U.S. drone a profound loss to the regime, Raisi left no void. Khamenei will decide which hard-line apparatchik appears on the ballot to replace him. He vowed "no disruption in the country's work." Iran will continue waging war on Israel by arming Hamas in Gaza and Hizballah in Lebanon.