If the declared aim of the USA and Israel was regime change in Iran, Leader Ali Khamenei was necessarily among the targets to be hit in the raids on the country. And so it was: after a day of rumors and denials yesterday the news of his elimination arrived, together with his daughter-in-law and son-in-law.
Khamenei’s great organizational skills
Since last year’s 12-day war, the current leaders of Tehran were expecting a new Israeli-American attack and, according to several sources within the regime, the leader himself would have developed an emergency plan to guarantee the survival of the system even in the event that he was assassinated, or kidnapped, as happened to Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro. The initiative would reflect the great organizational skills that have allowed Khamenei to strengthen his command network in all the vital ganglia of the system – starting with the Pasdaran, the Guardians of the Revolution – during the 37 years spent in the role of Rahbar (Guide, precisely), thus managing to compensate for his poor religious credentials. When the founder of the Islamic Republic, Ruhollah Khomeini, indicated him as his successor in 1989, Khamenei was in fact not even ayatollah.
The choice, as Khomeini himself explained, fell on him due to his political abilities, considered more important than his spiritual ones. And Khamenei made them count, increasingly consolidating his power, despite the intolerance towards him of many great Shiite ayatollahs, in particular those of the important Iraqi theological schools. The Iranian political-military leadership, led by Khamenei, managed to maintain the chain of command even during last year’s war, when, for security reasons, the Guide was isolated in a secret refuge and the use of the Internet and other means of communication had to be limited to a minimum. Sources within the regime told the New York Times that the eighty-six-year-old Khamenei had taken advantage of that experience and had gone further, leaving the necessary provisions to be followed even in the event of his disappearance.
In this case, according to these sources, the survival of the regime would be entrusted personally to Ali Larijani. The latter, appointed secretary of the National Security Council last August, is one of the main figures of pragmatic conservatism in Iran and belongs to a family whose history is inextricably linked to that of the Islamic Republic.
Who could Larijani be supported by?
The same sources state that Larijani could be joined by two other important figures: the president of Parliament Mohammad-Bagher Qalibaf, and the former president of the Republic Hassan Rouhani.
The hypothesized solution would only concern emergency management of state affairs, pending the election of a new Rahbar by the Assembly of Experts, made up of 88 members. But it is noteworthy that among the names mentioned to assume power in the event of Khamenei’s impediment, his son Mojtaba does not appear, having been indicated for years, especially by opposition circles, as his possible successor. In an article published this week in Foreign Affairs, Nate Swanson, an analyst who worked in the State Department for almost 20 years covering Iran, wrote that however, “no matter how weakened Iran is or how much force the US uses”, Khamenei would never agree to negotiate the end of the Islamic Republic” because “he would rather die as a martyr”.