Even if the Iranian people didn’t hate the Islamic Republic, and even if the U.S. and Israel hadn’t just decimated its leadership with a series of skillfully targeted airstrikes, the Islamic Republic’s chances of survival at this point are slimmer than most people realize, particularly the Democrats in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives.
After 36 years as supreme leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has been killed in that most ignominious of ways for a man of his outlook on life: an Israeli airstrike sent the 86-year-old tyrant to his heavenly virgins. Even in the best of times, this would have been a severe blow to Iran’s Islamic regime. At this point, it is something much worse than that for the mullahs in Tehran.
President Donald Trump has called upon the Iranian people to “take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will probably be your only chance for generations.” There is no denying the fact that this is much easier said than done. The regime’s forces have all the arms, while the people have no significant weaponry (that’s what gun control can do to a once-free and proud people). Still, the Iranian people could actually take over their nation’s government if enough of the Islamic regime’s forces realize that the writing is on the wall and that it is time for them to stop making war against their own people.
Yet while the Iranian people face massive obstacles, the Iranian Islamic regime faces even greater impediments to its continued existence. This is because Khamenei leaves no clear successor; the Islamic Republic’s system doesn’t work that way. Axios explained Saturday that Khamenei’s death “sets off an immediate succession crisis with no clear answer.”
The crisis comes because “under Iran's constitution, a council of clerics is meant to select a new supreme leader — but Israel's strikes also targeted senior Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commanders and political leaders, leaving the regime's chain of command in disarray. Israeli officials say they assess the Iranian minister of defense and the commander of the IRGC were also among those killed in targeted strikes on Saturday.”
It is likely that enough clerics could be found to choose another supreme leader, but the new man would not have anything approaching Khamenei’s stature, as there is no one in the surviving Iranian leadership with anything approaching the resume Khamenei had when he became Iran’s top dog in the first place.
For eight years before he become supreme leader in 1989, Khamenei was president of Iran, which in the Islamic Republic is the nation’s highest elected official, but very much a lackey for the supremo. Could the current president become the supreme leader, as Khamenei did? That is unlikely in the extreme. The current president, Masoud Pezeshkian, is not a Muslim cleric, and that makes a big difference. As The Complete Infidel’s Guide to Iran explains, the regime’s founder, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who was the supreme leader for the first ten years of this evil regime’s existence, based the Islamic Republic of Iran on the idea that Shi’ite clerics should be the rulers.
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Khomeini articulated the concept of velayat-e faqih (guardianship of the jurist), which contends that Muhammad, the prophet of Islam, showed that clerics should be in charge: “The Most Noble Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) headed the executive and administrative institutions of Muslim society. In addition to conveying the revelation and expounding and interpreting the articles of faith and the ordinances and institutions of Islam, he undertook the implementation of law and the establishment of the ordinances of Islam, thereby bringing into being the Islamic state.”
Therefore, a cleric must be the supreme leader, and in this hour of the Islamic Republic’s deepest crisis, there is no cleric who can calm the restiveness of the people and restore the credibility of the Islamic Republic. The best-case scenario would be for Khamenei’s successor to be akin to Karl Dönitz, who succeeded Adolf Hitler as president of Germany for about three weeks before the Allies mopped up the remnants of the National Socialist reich and put an end to the charade. The people of Iran, meanwhile, have had enough of the Islamic Republic, and now is the time for them to make their move.
