The Times:
Iran signals Ayatollah’s son will be new supreme leader in blow to peace
The reported appointment of Mojtaba Khamenei as Iran’s next supreme leader signals that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps maintains its iron grip over the country, dashing hopes of accommodation with the West.
The apparent elevation of Khamenei, 56, points to the promotion of securitarianism over clerical authority, making the regime’s acceptance of President Trump’s demands ever more unlikely.
The second son of the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is well versed in the business of internal repression, having taken control of the Basij, the Revolutionary Guard’s volunteer militia, during the 2009 anti-government protests which ended the reformist Green Movement and what existed of mainstream opposition within Iran.
Critically, his ascension would solidify Iran’s intentions not to bow to western demands, signalling the grip the Guards enjoy and heralding an increasingly militarised future for the regime.
His election would also indicate continuity with his father’s rule despite undermining a key pillar of the 1979 Islamic revolution: the rejection of the hereditary principle of monarchy that the overthrow of the Shah embodied.
Opposition to the hereditary principle has been a key factor in justifying the concentration of powers akin to an absolute monarchy in the hands of one individual. The late Ali Khamenei argued that one of the revolution’s greatest achievements “was the destruction of a structure which was based on a cruel and unreasonable hereditary monarchy”.
“This old and derelict structure was a wrong and unreasonable tradition that dominated our country for several thousand years,” he argued.
But with the regime in survival mode, the calculus has changed to choosing as supreme leader an individual who, if lacking in high-level theological qualifications, could continue the republic’s self-defining resistance to the West.….