Crowds in Tehran greeted the announcement of the country’s new supreme leader by chanting: “God’s hand is still upon us, Khamenei is still our leader.” As the world economic system grinds to a halt, Iran is promoting the elevation of Mojtaba Khamenei as an indication of reassuring continuity for a rustic decided to point out its defiance of the west.
Yet in actuality he injects a brand new unpredictable, even mysterious, ingredient into the Middle East disaster, since simply as he’s unknown to Washington, so he’s a determine of deep obscurity to bizarre Iranians. By distinction, the primary supreme chief, Ruhollah Khomeini, led Iran to revolution in 1979 and the second, Mojtaba’s father, Ali Khamenei, had been president for eight years earlier than he was chosen by the Assembly of Experts inside a day of Khomenei’s loss of life.
Before he was catapulted to energy following his father’s assassination, Mojtaba had lived the lifetime of a backroom bureaucrat, performing as “the path to access to his father” as a 2007 US diplomatic cable defined.
There is just one video of him talking in public, to a jurisprudence class, and there was no substantive interview marking out his views. Yet because the consummate insider, performing as deputy chief of employees within the supreme chief’s workplace for twenty years, he has lengthy been the candidate of the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC), the guts of Iran’s navy industrial advanced. One western diplomat mentioned his choice “shows Iran is doubling down on the security state. The new leader will be even more beholden to the IRGC”.
That is as a result of the IRGC needed to overcome many obstacles to make sure their candidate took the helm. It fended off a rearguard try to delay his appointment in order that the selection may be higher made in a special political environment – in all probability on the finish of the warfare.
The proof of the ability battle is fragmentary, however seems to have concerned recommendation from Ali Larijani, the secretary of the supreme nationwide safety council, {that a} new inexperienced chief in the midst of wartime was a threat. Others within the supreme chief’s workplace, akin to Ali Asghar Hejazi, additionally opposed Mojtaba’s elevation however have been killed in Israeli airstrikes.
But the IRGC needed to overcome different doubts over his well being, the hereditary precept, his spiritual {qualifications} and the practicality of holding a gathering of the Assembly of Experts with predatory Israeli warfare planes circling overhead.
The major uncertainty involved Mojtaba’s bodily and emotional well being. The bombing of the supreme chief’s compound on 28 February additionally killed his mom, his spouse, and a son. One of his sisters was additionally killed alongside along with her husband, in addition to a niece and nephew. To tackle excessive workplace in wartime after struggling such a private loss can’t be straightforward, and it’s mentioned he professed a reluctance to take action, though that will have been performative.
Clerics additionally needed to swallow their doubts about his spiritual data. Until 2022, Mojtaba held the decrease rank of Hojjat al-Islam. To repair this “qualification gap”, the 88-strong Assembly of Experts – below intense stress from the IRGC – fast-tracked his credentials in order that some seminary media retailers used the title “Ayatollah”. Something related occurred in 1989 to allow his father to turn into supreme chief in 1989.
The largest impediment was that he was the supreme chief’s son. The republic had come into being in contradistinction to the dynastic rule of the shah, and the rule of the Gulf households. Khomeini deemed the monarchy to be “abhorrent to Islam”, and Khamenei himself described the hereditary precept as un-Islamic.
Such doubts have been broadly shared throughout Iranian society.
Complex theological arguments have been produced to overrule objections to inherited energy.
But what nonetheless lay doubtful was how the meeting might safely attain consensus. The threat was underlined by bombing of the secretariat places of work of the Assembly of Experts in Qom final week, by which a number of employees members have been killed.
Debate ensued over whether or not the principles governing the meeting required the clerics to fulfill in particular person to determine a consensus. It was beforehand held that there needed to be an absolute majority with a two-thirds quorum.
The centrist former president Hassan Rouhani was one of many figures urging delay and calling for basic political overhaul on the warfare’s finish.
But the IRGC media, and hardline clerics, emphasised the necessity to fill the political vacuum, arguing the short-term management couldn’t govern indefinitely. The insistence of the US president, Donald Trump, that he be personally concerned within the course of solely elevated Iran’s willpower to be seen to be making sovereign choices about its management.
But what Khamenei will do with this management and the way he’ll relate with different centres of energy inside Iran is now the query. His father turned the supreme leader from a supervisory figure to the engine of government, even when he typically tried to keep away from taking sides in factional battles, and ensured blame landed elsewhere within the system when issues went improper. He additionally gave the IRGC “near-monopoly control of the Iranian economy across all sectors”, permitting the Revolutionary Guards to fund their extraterritorial actions, mentioned Maryam Alemzadeh, an affiliate professor in historical past and politics of Iran at St Antony’s College, Oxford.
The older Khamenei’s constant ideological thread was his perception that the US was untrustworthy, morally bankrupt and exploitative. So economic cooperation with the US, of the kind Trump is extracting from Venezuela, is not going to be on offer from his son’s regime. He will proceed to look to China and Russia to forestall the regime’s collapse. Above all, he’ll do all he can to guard the IRGC’s enterprise and political empire – one in all his father’s biggest legacies. It is an empire from which he himself has personally financially benefited, and is now below systematic US assault.
One of his first exams might be whether or not he renews his father’s fatwa in opposition to the possession of nuclear weapons. Another might be whether or not he units sensible preconditions for holding talks both with the US or the Gulf neighbours.
But conservatives are delighted. Ezzatollah Zarghami, a former tradition minister, who is among the few who claims to have had weekly one-on-one conferences with Mojtaba, mentioned: “He is a proponent of dialogue and listening to others’ voices. In personal interactions, he is excessively humble. Our young leader without even arriving has rubbed Trump’s nose in the dirt,” he mentioned.
