It is doubtful that Ebrahim Raisi, the ‘butcher of Tehran’, would have experienced a moral epiphany had he been shown in life the reaction that his demise would evoke from his own people. So it goes with fanatics, especially one who presided over the murder of thousands of political opponents by bundling them into forklift trucks and hanging them from cranes. Nevertheless, the jubilation affirms – as if it was needed – that the Iranian people have no truck with the Iranian regime.

His death leaves an opening in the competition for power

Let’s set aside the fact that the EU responded to the crash by offering its Copernicus rapid response emergency mapping service – going out of its way to save the life of the man dedicated to their own destruction – and what this says about the almost comical attitude of confusion and appeasement with which our western leadership is currently benighted. The bare fact is that elated Iranians are unlikely to be rewarded with any change in........

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