Iran war: Khamenei had planned for transition of power

Before the American and Israeli bombs started falling on Saturday, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the authoritarian centre of the theocratic regime for nearly 40 years, had planned for a transition of power in the event of his death. Now it appears that his plans will be put to the test.The Iranian govt said on Sunday that US-Israeli attacks on Iran had killed Ayatollah Khamenei. A short time later, the Iranian state news agency IRNA said that Iran’s president, the head of the judiciary and a jurist of the Guardian Council would be in charge during the transition period, without detailing what comes next.Last June, during the 12-day war with Israel, when Ayatollah Khamenei was in hiding, he named three candidates who could be appointed swiftly to succeed him. The supreme leader must be a senior Shia cleric and scholar appointed by a committee of clerics known as the Assembly of Experts.The three candidates Khamenei said he preferred for the role of supreme leader, based on interviews with six senior Iranian officials and two clerics who did not want to be identified, are the head of the judiciary, Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Eje’i; Ayatollah Khamenei’s chief of staff, Ali Asghar Hejazi; and Hassan Khomeini, a moderate cleric from the reformist political faction who is a grandson of Ayatollah Khomeini. The Israeli military said that Hejazi had been killed.Ayatollah Khamenei’s son Mojtaba, who has been a powerful figure in the shadows, is favoured by some factions, but Khamenei told followers that he did not want the post of supreme leader to be hereditary. Also, his fate is unclear right now. His wife was confirmed killed in a strike on Saturday and there has been no certain news as to whether he died too. Ahead of Saturday’s airstrikes, Ayatollah Khamenei took precautions to prepare the country and the regime for survival. He delegated the running of the country to one of his closest allies, the veteran politician Ali Larijani, who is the head of the national security council and has effectively sidelined Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian.“We will make the Zionist criminals and the dishonourable Americans regret it,” Larijani said on Saturday. “The brave soldiers and the great nation of Iran will give the international tyrants who are going to hell an unforgettable lesson.” Khamenei had also authorised a small circle of political and military allies to make decisions if he were to be killed, and named four layers of succession for senior military and political figures whom he personally appoints, according to senior Iranian officials.They include his chief of staff, Hejazi; Brig Gen Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker of the parliament and former commander of the Revolutionary Guards Corps; and his top military adviser and former commander in chief of the Guards, Gen Yahya Rahim Safavi. It was unclear early Sunday who was in charge.