Iran: What Khamenei Succession Whispers Reveal About Regime’s Decay

-OpEd-

LONDON — The issue of who will succeed Ali Khamenei, Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, is again grabbing attention inside and outside Iran. Though regime officials insist the 85-year-old is in good health, there are reports that the Assembly of Experts — the clerical body tasked with picking his successor — is actively shortlisting three leading candidates in camera and readying itself to appoint him at short notice.

It’s clear, this is anything but an abstract affair in Iran.

The revelation was made by the Imam-i jomeh, a leading preacher of the city of Isfahan and Khamenei’s personal representative in the province, and shows the regime as concerned more with managing the public mood than attending to the gritty business of running the country. While facing power shortages and the threat of gas being cut off in millions of homes, and with tens of millions of Iranians barely able to make ends meet, people should worry about Khamenei’s succession.

The implication here is that this is critical, and the “crisis” would end with a smooth succession. Yet a new leader would merely usher in the next phase of unending crises and socio-economic misery for the nation of 90 million. It is one dictator taking over from another, to pursue the same rancid, fanatical and totalitarian notions imposed on Iran by Khamenei’s predecessor, the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

He too was a dictator, not just for overseeing thousands of executions within a decade of taking power, but for installing a pseudo-religious concoction of his own termed Guardianship of the Jurisprudent (Vilayat-i faqih), the clerical regime that has robbed the institutions of the Islamic Republic of all power and even of sense, like a parasite disemboweling its host.

All Iranians are hostages 

It is a medieval regime that brooks no dissent, even if reformers in Iran like to claim Khomeini really did want an Islamic Republic — a representative democracy that safeguards public morals!

Khamenei has done nothing Khomeini would not have done had he lived on. If a moral republic is all they wanted, why the vast sums spent so far on the tools of repression and advanced intelligence fit for the Communist-style regimes Khamenei admires? Like his predecessor, Khamenei has had no qualms about ordering thousands imprisoned or hundreds executed, and is making sure his successor will take over a big prison of a country.

Corruption and nepotism, theft, waste and destructive practices have flourished under this leader

The Islamic Republic, a pioneer of hostage-taking for ransom, has expanded the practice to the national scale. All Iranians are effectively its hostages, not to mention the peoples of Lebanon and Iraq. Corruption and nepotism, theft, waste and destructive practices have flourished under this leader on an unprecedented scale.

There is little scope left for reform or adjustments, especially when state institutions have been made toothless. Khamenei’s successor must simply keep calm, and carry on. And in this unpleasant task he can count on the backing of all those agencies that have morphed from public servants into praetorian guard: the judiciary, the Revolutionary Guards and their militias and the Guardian Council. Indeed the next leader must use them: he has no choice, as the regime chose to pummel the republic that was acting as its loincloth.

One of those repeatedly cited as a ‘leading’ aspirant to succeed Khamenei is his second son, Mujtaba Khamenei. He is considered close to key intelligence and military agencies and has come to symbolize the generational change of guard within the revolutionary establishment. He is believed to have been involved in state affairs for years now, and suspected to have had a role in the repression of a series of public protests after 2009.

Sham elections

Little would change in Iran should he succeed… though things can always get worse. With little experience in government and a difficult-to-gauge level of support among the public, politicians and civil servants, the younger Khamenei would likely become reliant on senior military and intelligence elements, which could boost the role of hardliners and intensify repressive practices. But truth be told, it would be much the same with just about any name mentioned as a contender.

The succession question is a big deal for regime hands.

The succession question is a big deal for regime hands because it is clearer than ever that in this non-republic, a ‘paramount leader’ is the one calling the shots, not to mention dishing out perks and pensions, in a pre-determined way.

As for the Iranian people, they have shown with protests and a systematic boycott of elections over a decade, that they simply don’t have any consideration for the regime, with or without its sham elections.

Iranians know to expect nothing from another leader, assuming reforms or a systemic overhaul were even possible. All he can do — the only political act his office and a kleptocratic structure will allow — is to keep a lid on things. For how long? Perhaps in spite of the regime’s aptitude at weathering crises for over 40 years, we may have an answer sooner rather than later.