Karim Sadjadpour
For the first time in nearly four decades, Iran is on the cusp of a change of leadership—and maybe even of regime. As Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s reign nears its end, a 12-day war in June laid bare the fragility of the system he built. Israel battered Iranian cities and military installations, paving the way for the United States to drop 14 bunker-busting bombs on Iranian nuclear sites. The war exposed the enormous gulf between Tehran’s ideological bluster and the limited capabilities of a regime that has lost much of its regional power, no longer controls its skies, and exercises diminished control over its streets. At the war’s conclusion, the 86-year-old Khamenei emerged from hiding to declare victory in a raspy voice—a spectacle meant to project strength that instead underscored the regime’s frailty.
In the autumn of the ayatollah, the central question is whether the theocratic regime he has been ruling since 1989 will endure, transform, or implode—and what kind of political order might emerge in its wake. The 1979 revolution transformed Iran from a Western-aligned monarchy into an Islamist theocracy, flipping it virtually overnight from an American ally to a sworn enemy. Because Iran today remains a pivotal state—an energy superpower whose internal politics shape the Middle East’s security and political order and ripple across the global system—the matter of who (or what) succeeds Khamenei is of enormous consequence.
Over the past two years—since Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack on Israel, which Khamenei alone among major world leaders openly endorsed—his life’s work has been reduced to ashes by Israel and the United States. His closest military and political proteges have been killed or assassinated. His regional proxies have been hobbled. His vast nuclear enterprise, built at staggering cost to Iran’s economy, has been buried under rubble.
The Islamic Republic has sought to turn its military humbling into an opportunity to rally the country around the flag, but the indignities of daily life are inescapable. Iran’s 92 million people make up the largest population in the world to have been isolated from the global financial and political system for decades. Iran’s economy is among the world’s most sanctioned. Its currency is among the world’s most devalued. Its passport is among the world’s most denied. Its Internet is among the world’s most censored. Its air is among the world’s most polluted.
No comments:
Post a Comment