I'm Brian Gotstein and this is the Daily Signal Top News for Monday, May 20th.

Here are today's headlines. questions remain over how this weekend's death of Iran's president will affect

tensions in the Middle East. Iranian president Ibrahim Rausi and Iran's foreign

minister were killed in a helicopter crash over the weekend.

There's no evidence of foul play and speculation is that bad weather and pilot negligence may have been the main reasons for the crash. Riese was nicknamed the Butcher of Tehran for ordering the execution of thousands of political prisoners in the 1980s.

While he was Iran's highest elected leader, he was not the highest leader in the nation.

That position goes to Supreme Leader Ali Komini.

Virginia Allen sat down with Heritage Foundation's

Director of the Allison Center for National Security, Robert Greenway,

to ask him about what the President's death means for the leadership of Iran.

In the end, in terms of the significance obviously the president's departure

has a significant impact on the politics inside of Iran but the Supreme leader

remains in control and in the end the position of both were really to convey the decisions made by the Supreme Leader

they had some influence over it but in the end the Supreme Leader remains in charge and so there should be no

change to domestic or external policies. The Supreme Leader of Iran has named the

country's first Vice President to serve as acting President for now. Greenway says the Biden administration

could use the death of the president as an opportunity to stand with the

citizens of Iran, but notes that he is not likely to use that approach.

I think there's an opportunity for the U.S. to demonstrate

maximal support for the Iranian population.

And again, I don't think that's the policy.

The White House had reportedly negotiators in Oman just

...