The forces of freedom won a major victory when the supreme leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ayatollah Khamenei, was killed last Saturday, but while the Islamic Republic was staggered, it was not destroyed. The mullahs hastily convened a meeting of the Iranian Supreme Council, which has the responsibility of choosing a new supreme leader, but just as the voting was starting, the Israelis crashed the party.
Fox News stated Tuesday that “Israeli forces struck an Iranian Supreme Council gathering on Tuesday as the group was meeting to choose a successor to the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.” According to Fox News’ Trey Yingst, “They just targeted the meeting in Tehran where what’s left of the leadership was gathering to choose a new Supreme Leader.”
The Iranian leadership, however, was once again staggered but unbowed. As PJM’s Rick Moran noted Thursday, “Mojtaba Khamenei, the son of the late, barely lamented Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, is being seriously considered as a successor to his father. Khamenei the Younger is a ‘mid-ranking cleric,’ according to the Jerusalem Post.”
Indeed, it looks as if young Mojtaba, 56, has the job, even if only for lack of anyone else. On Tuesday, the dissident site Iran International reported that “Iran’s clerical body, the Assembly of Experts, has elected Mojtaba Khamenei, the son of the late Ali Khamenei, as the Islamic Republic’s new Supreme Leader, according to his informed sources who spoke to Iran International on condition of anonymity.”
Mojtaba Khamenei is a hardliner of hardliners: Dr. Eric Mandel of the Middle East Political and Information Network (MEPIN) stated that Khamenei the younger is “widely viewed as one of the architects of the regime’s repression.” Iran analyst Arash Azizi added that the new supreme leader “has been a bete noire of democratic movements at least since 2009 when he was rumored to have helped orchestrate the repression.”
Even worse, he may not be really holding the reins of power, and those who are likely to be calling the shots in the Islamic Republic could be even more brutal than Mojtaba Khamenei. NBC News observed Wednesday that “the real power is now likely to be in the hands of the heavily-armed force that propped up Khamenei for decades: the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.”
That’s not good news for anyone who hopes for the Iranian people to be free. Afshon Ostovar, “an Iran expert at the Naval Postgraduate School in California and the author of ‘Vanguard of the Imam,’ a history of the Revolutionary Guards,” explained: “Even if they replace the supreme leader, what is left of the regime is the IRGC. And the IRGC is going to be the last vestige remaining of the regime until the regime is overhauled, either within itself or by external forces. Once the smoke clears, if there’s not a complete regime change, then the people who will be in charge of Iran will be associated or the actual command of the IRGC.”
This is bad news because the IRGC is the primary force responsible for the brutal repression of the nationwide protests against the Islamic regime that recently swept across Iran. In the hour of their deepest crisis, the Iranian top dogs are opting for more of what has led the Iranian people to hate them in the first place. The more repressive the regime has been, the more the Iranians turn against it, and the more Iranians turn against the regime, the more repressive it becomes.
Related: Does Iran’s Islamic Regime Even Have a Chance to Survive at This Point?
This vicious circle emanates from the very foundations of the Islamic regime. The rulers of the Islamic Republic guide all their actions by the teachings of Islam, and the foundational text of Islam gives Muslim rulers a chilling directive for how to deal with dissent and unrest: “Make ready for them all that you can of force and of warhorses, so that by them you may strike terror in the enemy of Allah and your enemy…” (Qur’an 8:60)
The Islamic Republic has struck a great deal of terror in the hearts of the Iranians it considers its enemies, and it assumes that as it is an Islamic republic, its enemies are the enemies of Allah himself. The choice of Mojtaba Khamenei as supreme leader, if it sticks, and the likely rule of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps will without any doubt bring Iranians more of that terror.
