Cogito Ergo Non Serviam
Ayatollah Khamenei Replaces Ayatollah Khamenei in Iran
The Supreme Leader of Iran, the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, died in the first hours of the US-Israeli attack on Iran. Iran took only a few days to select a successor, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei. The matching surname is not a coincidence. The new boss is the son of the old boss. The American president has dismissed him as a "lightweight," but his rise to power suggests he is much more temporal than spiritual when it comes to hardball politics. He has never really held office, but his fingerprints are all over the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, and other parts of the Iranian system are not alien to him. He represents continuity, and that includes the Supreme Leader being targeted for death by the US and Israel.
The theocracy of Iran is a complicated political system. There is a Supreme National Security Council, a Guardian Council, the judiciary, a unicameral parliament, and Assembly of Experts, an Expediency Council, a president, the Revoutinary Guards and the armed forces. These power centers vie with one another at times and support each other at other times. Overseeing them is the Supreme Leader, who is appointed for life. While the Supreme Leader rarely engages in the nuts and bolts of governing, his word is law, and his word can overturn any decision of any other part of the government.
The appointment of the younger Khamenei does run against the grain in one way. One of the complaints of the 1979 Iranian Revolution was the hereditary nature of the monarchy. The Pahlavi dynasty fell in part because of this.
The New York Times noted:
The late Ayatollah Khamenei had indicated to close advisers that he did not want his son to succeed him because he did not want the role to become hereditary, according to three senior Iranian officials familiar with Mr. Khamenei and the selection process. They spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive internal issues.
But politics is the art of the possible, and sometimes, principle falls to pragmatic considerations. "Mojtaba is the wisest pick right now because he is intimately familiar with running and coordinating security and military apparatuses," Mehdi Rahmati, an analyst in Tehran, said in an interview. "He was in charge of this already."
There have been the usual voices offering hope with the installation of a new leader. He is allegedly part of a younger generation, a more pragmatic one, a generation that sees the need for change. These voices are not wrong necessarily, but they are certainly premature. As Supreme Leader, he can make war or peace as he sees fit.
The New York Times also reported, "Since the war began, U.S. and Israeli airstrikes have killed not just Mr. Khamenei’s father, but also his wife, Zahra Adel; his mother, Mansoureh Khojasteh Bagherzadeh; and a son, the Iranian government said."
Ayatollah Khamenei may be a forgiving fellow, but one would be very surprised if he announced that he was going to let the deaths of his family members go unavenged in the interests of peace. The Koran advises, "Repel evil with that which is best, and you will see that the one you had enmity with will become as a close friend" (Surah Fussilat 41:34). It is more common among humans to seek an eye for an eye than it is to turn the other cheek.
The long and short of this appointment is simple. The war is not going to end any time soon. Iran will continue to absorb punishment from the US and Israel. What it will not do is submit, at least not for a time.
The decline under the mullahs continues to accelerate in Iran.
© Copyright 2026 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Ubuntu Linux.
|
|
|
