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The first attempt the surviving rulers of the Islamic Republic of Iran made to replace their fallen supreme leader, the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, didn’t quite go as planned. Fox News reported 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 remaining high command quickly regrouped, however. Also on Tuesday, 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.”
If this report was accurate, it was a clear sign that the Islamic Republic has not decided to try to win over the disaffected Iranian people by moderating its treatment of them. Nor is it going to make even the smallest attempt to show a different face to the U.S. and Israel, so as to head off further military action against it. Instead, the surviving mullahs have decided to double down on the savagery toward their own people and bellicosity toward the outside world that have brought the situation to this point.
Iran International notes that Mojtaba Khamenei is a longtime Islamic Republic insider, although he has generally kept a low profile: “For years he operated from within the Office of the Supreme Leader, serving as a gatekeeper and power broker around his father. His position has often been compared to the role played by Ahmad Khomeini, the son of Islamic Republic’s founder Ruhollah Khomeini, who served as a key aide and confidant during the early years of the revolutionary state.”
Dr. Eric Mandel of the Middle East Political and Information Network (MEPIN) observed that Mojtaba Khamenei 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.”
In line with this reputation, “a key source of Mojtaba’s influence lies in his close connections to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC),” the brutal and bloodthirsty enforcement arm of the Islamic Republic. And so “over the years, opposition figures and political rivals have accused Mojtaba of playing a role in shaping election outcomes and coordinating crackdowns on dissent.”
It is really no surprise that the Islamic Republic would be digging in and clinging to its brutality. The rulers of the Islamic Republic guide all their actions by the teachings of Islam, and the Qur’an gives rulers only one tool for dealing with dissent and unrest: terror. “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 from its inception viewed those who oppose it as “enemies of Allah”; how could it not do so, when it so scrupulously implemented the law of Allah throughout every aspect of Iranian society? Dissidents and protestors have routinely been charged with “sowing corruption on the earth” or “making war against Allah and his messenger,” vague crimes that can encompass a wide variety of behaviors.
These crimes are also based on the Qur’an, which prescribes more terror as punishment for them: “The only reward for those who make war upon Allah and his messenger and struggle to sow corruption on earth will be that they will be killed or crucified, or have their hands and feet cut off on opposite sides, or be expelled from the land. Such will be their degradation in this world, and in the hereafter, theirs will be an awful doom.” (Qur’an 5:33)
Thus when the Iranian Islamic regime terrorizes its own people, it thinks it is acting in accord with the commands of Allah. To refrain from striking terror in the alleged enemies of Allah would be to disobey his command. So the more the people protest, the more the regime terrorizes them. This leads the people to hate the regime and protest all the more, and all the regime can think of to do is terrorize them even more brutally.
Hence the promotion of Mojtaba Khamenei. For the Iranian people and, if the new supreme leader can manage it, the Israelis and the Americans, more terror is in the offing.
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