As the bombs kept falling across Iran on Sunday, remaining high-level officials in the capital suggested they intend to reconstitute and retain the basic governing structure of the Islamic Republic.
Shortly after a distraught anchor confirmed the death of Ali Khamenei in a sobbing jeremiad broadcast on state television, IRNA said Masoud Pezeshkian, Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei and someone from the Guardian Council (apparently seminary coordinator Alireza Arafi) will run the country during what the government described as a “transition period.”
That’s not materially different — if it’s different at all — from what would’ve transpired had Khamenei died of natural causes rather than being blown up while sitting in his office.
As it turns out, Khamenei was in fact in the leadership complex depicted Saturday in satellite images as a pile of smoke-grey wreckage. It’s astounding he left himself so exposed. And that he convened a who’s who of the high military command around him at a location where he was known to reside and work.
Apparently, the regime has learned nothing about the peril of congregating together during wartime. Saturday’s strike on the leadership compound was the exclamation point on two years of Israeli attacks targeting group gatherings of key IRGC and Hezbollah figures in Tehran and Beirut, both above ground and in subterranean bunkers.
Reports suggest the US had been tracking Khamenei for months. The CIA passed his location to Mossad on Saturday. Shortly thereafter, IDF warplanes closed his curtain with long-range missiles.
It’s hard to know whether the government in Tehran actually believes the US and Israel will countenance the choosing and elevation of a new Supreme Leader or whether they’re just going through the motions because they don’t know what else to do. But as noted here on Saturday, the governing model will either change or — and it pains me greatly to suggest this — the US might invade to effectuate such a change.
Trump can deal, figuratively and literally, with an IRGC military junta. What he can’t, and surely won’t, abide is the preservation of a system defined by a symbiotic relationship between a dictatorial divinity figure and a corrupt military obliged to carry out the orders of an ideologue in exchange for money and power.
On principle — and I’m chuckling as I write this — Trump probably doesn’t see much, or anything, wrong with such a system. He likes authoritarian states, he likes a military willing to oppress domestically and project abroad and, particularly in the aftermath of the failed attempt on his life in Pennsylvania, he believes his position as head of state might be ordained by the Almighty.
The problem, then, isn’t so much the setup in Tehran, it’s the tenets of the Revolution, chiefly the unswerving commitment to the eradication of the Israeli state, the habitual menacing of American interests and the theocracy’s nuclear program.
So, the current model’s a non-starter. And out of five candidates to replace Khamenei, two are dead, one’s a dead man walking and the other two are related to Khamenei or Ruhollah Khomeini which won’t (or shouldn’t) work, because that’d mean that in the short space of 48 years, the Revolution went from overthrowing a hereditary monarchy to becoming one itself.
The two deceased candidates to replace Khamenei were Ebrahim Raisi (who died in a helicopter crash in 2024) and close aid Ali Asghar Hejazi (who, according to the IDF anyway, died in this weekend’s strikes).
The two Supreme Leader relatives are Khamenei’s son, Mojtaba, and Hassan Khomeini, Ruhollah Khomeini’s grandson. Khamenei himself preferred not to elevate his son because, as noted, the optics are absurd in the context of the Revolution’s founding.
That leaves the above-mentioned Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei, head of the judiciary whose claim to fame is ruthlessness. In no uncertain terms, he’s a murderer. It’s not a stretch — at all — to describe him as the regime’s chief executioner.
In January, following the mass protests which set the stage for this weekend’s US-Israeli bombing campaign, Mohseni-Ejei personally interrogated protesters on national television, forcing them to confess to different sorts of treason.
It’s difficult for an observer of the Islamic Republic to convey to a casual audience how ridiculous a proposition it is that after all this trouble, Trump and Israel would allow a hardliner’s hardliner — indeed, the most nefarious figure in Iran’s jurist-clerical elite — to assume the Supreme Leader role.
On Saturday, the judiciary’s news agency said Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei’s in “complete health.” I’d be very surprised if he stays that way. I’d be shocked if Israel allows Iran to reconstitute the regime with him as Supreme Leader.
Meanwhile, Trump offered a new warning on Sunday. “Iran just stated that they are going to hit very hard today, harder than they have ever hit before,” he wrote, on TruthSocial, referring to IRGC threats of retaliation for Khamenei’s death. “They better not do that.”
You are by far the most knowledgeable resource I know of on this material, I have been looking forward to seeing what you would pen since I saw the news of the attacks.
Do you have any insight into how this may play out? I think Trump has shown an unwillingness to be patient and this scenario, that we created, demands it. This leaves me assuming he’s going to select the quick and easy way out of this and then declare flawless victory. However this situation is far more globally impactful than anything Trump has ever been party to before.
How do you see this going?
Suppose the regime stubbornly refuses or be overthrown, and remains a threat to Israeli and US interests. In other words, the air campaign fails. Then what?
There is no scenario in which Trump will invade Iran for real. He might be convinced to send special forces to go in, destroy a nuclear facility, and get out. But I think he’d rather leave a re-arming Iran to be someone else’s problem than launch a large and sustained US ground campaign.
There is, I think, an alternative that his advisors will push. The US can starve Iran out by shutting off its exports. The US can destroy whatever oil and shipping infrastructure it wants. I don’t think Iran can export much overland through Afghanistan etc. Eventually, when military and IRGC go unpaid long enough, and enough of their leaders are unalived, the security apparatus might fail. The US can also try to identify and arm opposition groups, while placing ads in Tehran’s newspapers for the next Delcey.
This will take a long time to “work”, if it even does, and the Republicans will go into the midterms with the bonus of higher oil prices and starving, dying Iranian civilians. Probably still better than the bonus of American soldiers bogged down in a large ground war.
Listen friends,
This war has nothing to do with Iran and everything to do with the mid term elections. How could Iran be a nuclear threat when he stated last summer that he obliterated the treat. It’s all made up for the simple calculated idea, that he knows he can’t take over our state run elections. The legal push back will be harsh. When he tries, it will for sure get to the Supreme Court in an emergency decision and allow him the right to screw with the vote because we are at war.
His minions are working overtime in laying out possible future legal outcomes to get to what they want. Trump is not the brains of this outfit, Miller and the religious nuts like Russell Vought are the draftsman. Trump is just the empty vessel that they needed to accomplish and create their fever dream of an American Taliban. They can stroke this guy in every direction as long as they feed his narcism and keep him where they want him, that means happy ego!
What a cocktail of cosmic events that had to come together to join this band of band of bozo’s together, oh wait, I mean Highly Intelligent Zealots.
These guys are 20 steps ahead of everybody.
There will never be American boots on the ground, Just a series of nonsense until this fiasco has served its purpose, then it is cut and run and claim victory. Total Shit Show!
Sorry, but some parts of this comment simply aren’t accurate. I agree with the general sentiment, but it’s overwrought and yes, this war has quite a bit to with Iran.
Maybe this comment is overwrought, but the anxiety doesn’t come from this one exercise over the weekend. What happened this weekend is just another chess move on the road to full autocracy. I live in the Twin Cities, I’m watching it in real time, quite literally out my front window. I have good friends of mine that are American born and of Mexican decent that I went to grade school and high school with. They are carrying around their birth certificates and passports. I live in a suburb that has a large population of Mexican people where most of them are second and third generation, like my friends, American born.
This war is about Iran because it was the target of choice and because of the history. It can be conveniently justified. Is Iran a bad actor on the world stage, YES! From some of the reporting that I have read, and I’m sure you have a better understanding of it, is that in the talks with Iran, Trump had a better deal that Obama had. Could Iran be trusted, no, but this is a war of choice at this time by this administration with the hopes that they can capitalize on it in the from of some emergency powers in this election year. Is that projection, yes, but they have been projecting Project 2025 on us for 13 months and they mean business.
In what world does anybody think Trump or the Zealots want the Democrats slapping his ass around for two years? They will stop and nothing and that’s just where we are. Everybody is in the weeds, while the Zealots are in the tree tops.
Just saying….
I love your work and respect your opinions.
And the winner is: the Nepo Baby, of course.