Akbar Ganji
Israel and the United States’ targeted assassination of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei—and subsequent strikes on a gathering of the Islamic Republic’s Assembly of Experts—turned long-standing deliberations over who should succeed Khamenei into an opaque emergency process. The assembly’s decision to choose Khamenei’s son Mojtaba was thus made as much out of necessity as it was out of merit. It reflected an effort to preserve a degree of continuity at the top of the regime after the U.S.-Israeli operations killed much of the regime’s military and clerical leadership.
But neither the urgency of the moment nor the desire for continuity fully explains Mojtaba’s rise. The most significant factor in his selection was U.S. President Donald Trump. The president’s expressed desire to help select Iran’s next supreme leader, along with Israeli assassination threats, made Mojtaba the only viable option for regime survival. With its sovereignty undermined and its leadership humiliated, Iran opted to elevate a figure representing resistance to foreign pressure—even as that choice contradicted the regime’s ideological principles and constitutional norms.
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