Iran’s shadowy new supreme leader will see US as an implacable enemy

Donald Trump claims the remnants of the Iranian regime are looking for an olive branch. The election of Mojtaba Khamenei as the new supreme leadersuggests otherwise.

Khamenei, the second son of the late Ali Khamenei, who was killed in an air strike on Saturday, is a shadowy, hardline conservative figure with deep links to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

Having reportedly supplied the intelligence to take out one ayatollah Khamenei, the US is unlikely to look favourably on another one rising in his place.

And from the new supreme leader’s perspective, the recent bombing campaigns have killed his father, mother, wife and son, while shattering its navy, missile depots and nuclear programme.

Given his background, he could hardly have seen the US as anything but an implacable enemy. But the events of recent days will have given a personal edge to that hatred.

Since he began bombing Iran on Saturday, Mr Trump has sounded uncertain about who or what would succeed the late ayatollah’s regime.

In Venezuela, where US special forces snatched Nicolás Maduro from his compound in early January, Delcy Rodríguez had been identified by the intelligence services as a figure who could guarantee stability while working with Washington.

Not so in Iran. Mr Trump has given little indication of what comes next beyond calling on the Iranian people to seize control of the government and noting that the late ayatollah’s potential successors were all dead.

What comes next is expected to be Mojtaba Khamenei, who on Sunday was elected by Iran’s most senior clerics as the next supreme leader.

Born in 1969, Mojtaba Khamenei was just nine when the fall of the Shah ushered in the new Islamic Republic and he was 19 when his father became supreme leader following the death of Ruhollah Khomeini.

He served in the latter years of the Iran-Iraq war, forming relationships with figures who would go on to take a leading role in the IRGC as he did so.

Khamenei began his Islamic studies soon after but, like his father, would never reach beyond a mid-ranking clerical role.

In time, however, he would be assessed as the second-most powerful leader in the supreme leader’s office in one leaked diplomatic cable.

According to the 2008 missive, sent from the US embassy in London to Condoleezza Rice, then US secretary of state, he was viewed as a “capable and forceful leader and manager who may someday succeed to at least a share of national leadership”.

Citing his limited clerical advancement, it suggested he could serve alongside Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the former Iranian president, and Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, the former chief justice of Iran.

The two other men are dead. Khamenei is the only one who remains.

He also formed close ties with powerful figures in the regime. He is said to have been an adviser and financier of Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf, then mayor of Tehran and now the speaker of Iran’s Parliament.

Likewise, Khamenei was married to Zahra Abdel, the daughter of a former speaker. After being treated for impotence at a London clinic, according to the cable, they had a son.

His connections to the capital do not end there: he reportedly owns a string of mansions on Bishops Avenue in Hampstead, north London. Nicknamed Billionaire’s Row, it is one of the wealthiest streets in the world.

Khamenei owns 11 properties worth more than £100m through a network of shell companies, according to a lengthy investigation by Bloomberg News that entailed examination of Land Registry documents and interviews with sources.

In his favour is his experience of working the machinery of the Iranian state, while staying hidden in his father’s shadow. Some analysts have described him as the “gatekeeper” to the ayatollah’s inner circle.

“Mojtaba is the wisest pick right now because he is intimately familiar with running and co-ordinating security and military apparatuses,” Mehdi Rahmati, an analyst based in Tehran, told The New York Times.

Others are more sceptical of Khamenei. His father was, at the time of his death, the longest-serving leader in the Middle East. His son’s odds don’t look so good.

Israel Katz, Israel’s defence minister, threatened on Wednesday to assassinate any Iranian picked as the new supreme leader.

Israel’s success at killing the senior Khamenei shows this is no idle threat.

Beyond the likelihood that he will become Israel’s target number one, there is more to the job than the blunt exercise of state power, as Janatan Sayeh, a Tehran-born research analyst at the Foundation for Defence of Democracies, told The Telegraph.

“He lacks independent political experience, has almost no public profile, and while he has observed power politics from inside the system, he has never had to exercise it himself,” he said.

Another question mark that will loom over Khamenei’s elevation is the question of hereditary succession.

Iran has not had a monarchy since the Shah was dethroned almost 50 years ago, and the first ayatollah, Khomeini, had declared the notion of dynasties “un-Islamic”.

Khamenei is unequivocally the continuity candidate: he even looks like a younger version of his father, down to the square spectacles and the salt-and-pepper beard.

That last name, his long-standing influence and IRGC credentials seem to have stood him in good stead among the regime’s power brokers, reeling from ferocious US-Israeli strikes and bracing for weeks more.

But it is unlikely to win over those protesters who took to the streets of Iran in January for anti-regime demonstrations and were slaughtered in their thousands.

Nor does he look like someone calculated to win over Mr Trump, who on Sunday warned a new supreme leader would not “last long” if the US disapproved.`

“They could have elevated a reformist or moderate to try to appease Trump, especially since he has entertained something closer to the Maduro model. But they didn’t,” said Mr Sayeh.

“This is likely because the IRGC prefers working with someone they know and are close with.

“More importantly, it signals that Tehran’s remaining decision-makers are opting for escalation rather than compromise.”

As talk of Khamenei being elevated to ayatollah intensified last week, senior Iranian officials were reluctant to announce him for fear he would be targeted by American and Israeli attacks. Now he has been announced, there is reason to doubt how long this new leader will remain supreme.

[Source: Daily Telegraph]