Toppling Iran's Supreme Leader could be a mistake
Are we already seeing an ominous mission creep in Israel's blistering attack on Iran? First, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's air assault was all about ending Iran's covert nuclear weapons programme, a day after the International Atomic Energy Agency declared Tehran in breach of its non-proliferation obligations. Then, within a few hours of launching 'one of the greatest military operations in history', Netanyahu was telling Iranians that Israel was 'clearing the path for you to achieve your freedom'.
Encouraging them to 'stand up' and overthrow the 'evil and oppressive' government of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, he noted that Israel had been friends with Iran since the time of Cyrus the Great, founder of the Achaemenid Empire, ruler of Persia from around 559-530 bc, and liberator of the exiled Jews of Babylon. Israel, Netanyahu said, would stand with the brave Iranian people.
So, as Iran faces its greatest external threat since the Iran-Iraq War of 1980-88, what are the prospects for regime change in Tehran and who might come next after Khamenei? Nicholas Hopton, director-general of the Middle East Association, and former British ambassador to Iran, Libya, Yemen and Qatar, is sceptical. 'It seems to me that in appealing to the Iranian people, Prime Minister Netanyahu is possibly being either disingenuous or overoptimistic in hoping that will lead to regime change, or at least a regime more palatable to Israel and the West. The one thing likely to unite sentiment within Iran is opposition to external interference, as the country's long, complicated history shows us.'
In other words, faced with an Israeli air assault that is progressively more damaging and humiliating – if the US joins in with bigger bombs, it will only get worse – the long-suffering, famously resilient Iranian people may start feeling the same way about Khamenei as FDR did about the Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza: he 'may be a son of a bitch, but he's our son of a bitch'.
We would do well to consider carefully what might follow a revolutionary regime that has been in power since 1979. 'It's more likely than not that a harder-line leadership, whether it's an individual, a cleric, a secular leader or a group, would emerge, at least initially,' warns Hopton. 'Remember that the current regime was open to negotiations and engagement with the US and the West.'
Who will succeed 86-year-old Khamenei? Currently the Supreme Leader is said to be holed up with his family in an underground bunker in northeastern Tehran, or far beyond, safe for now from Israel's astonishingly effective decapitating strikes – supposedly only Trump prevented a direct assassination attempt on him. Notwithstanding Netanyahu's desire to remove the head of the snake, Khamenei's poor health regularly invites predictions of his imminent demise and anxious consideration of the succession.
With the death of President Ebrahim Raisi in a helicopter crash in May last year, the field of potential successors has thinned distinctly in the interest of Khamenei's 55-year-old son Mojtaba. Though he is a more unknown quantity and does not have the reputation for cold-blooded brutality enjoyed by Raisi, who earned his 'Butcher of Tehran' sobriquet for his role in the mass execution of political prisoners in 1988, Mojtaba is no shrinking violet. Widely seen as a hardliner, he is said to be a powerbroker with considerable influence over the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the regime's muscle, and of course has backing at the very top. The secretive Assembly of Experts, the body which will select Khamenei's successor, is heavy on hardliners and is thought to have been influenced in Mojtaba's favour, but this does not rule out the possibility for surprises.
Mojtaba is not popular and lacks prestige. He does not have the formal religious qualifications for the role, but neither did his father back in 1989. Then, the constitution required the Supreme Leader to be a marja-e taqlid, a top-ranking Twelver Shia cleric. So that stipulation was removed, clearing the way for Khamenei's appointment.
No one seriously expects that this sort of finessing and finagling will be beyond the ayatollahs when the time comes to choose the old man's successor. Mojtaba is also associated with vote-rigging during the 2009 elections, the savage suppression of the anti-government protests which followed those elections, and the embezzlement of state funds. To this extent, he appears eminently qualified to lead the revolutionary republic: a nepo baby ayatollah.
Also in the frame is Ayatollah Sadegh Larijani, a close aide to Khamenei, chairman of the Expediency Discernment Council and a former chief justice of Iran with blood on his hands. His staunchly anti-democratic views put him firmly within the hardliner camp. Devoted to the doctrine of Velayat-e faqih, the Guardianship of the Islamic Jurist, he has said that 'votes do not bestow legitimacy on the government'. Larijani prefers divine authority, as mediated by male clerics of a certain age.
Reza Pahlavi, son of the last and ultimately despised shah, is also on manoeuvres, arguing that the end of the revolutionary regime is nigh. His candidacy – reports say he is 'not necessarily' looking for the restoration of the monarchy – has a tone-deaf shamelessness that is briefly entertaining, but the less said about him the better. He reminds me of the late Sharif Ali bin al-Hussein, the charming, self-styled Crown Prince of Iraq who popped up in Baghdad in 2004 and did the rounds, claiming to be the legitimate heir to a nonexistent throne.
Of course, Netanyahu's encouragement of a popular uprising may be bluster, but there is still no doubting the seriousness of this moment for Tehran in terms of regime survival. Ali Ansari, a professor of Middle East history at St Andrews, reckons Netanyahu's tilt at toppling Iran's leadership brings enormous risks and dangers. 'To be blunt, declaring 'regime change' as one of your goals makes the current campaign hostage to fortune and potentially open-ended. There is likely to be a reckoning for the regime, but this is only likely to happen once the conflict is over and the dust has settled – and not as a response to Netanyahu.'
What other clues are there to help assess the likelihood and desirability of a new leadership emerging in Tehran? History lessons can be boring because they distract from more exciting things like wars, but let us dwell for a moment on some recent western interventions. They might suggest that we should be careful what we wish for.
Let's start with Afghanistan. In 2001, a US-led alliance swiftly removed the Taliban because they had been hosting al-Qaeda, the terrorists behind the 9/11 attacks. That was the easy bit – and don't forget that Iran offered to assist the US in that mission. But then there was a bit of mission creep and we decided it would be nice to have a western-friendly government in Kabul.
Cue 20 years of nation-building and a procession of puppet presidents, some – such as Hamid Karzai in his striped silk chapan coats and jaunty karakul hats – highly photogenic and adept at conning gullible western leaders. In rushed the international advisors on gender, good governance, human rights, anti-corruption, counter narcotics, security sector reform, agronomy, communications, Uncle Tom Cobley and all. But the 'governments' we propped up turned out to be little more than kleptocratic mayoralties in Kabul, the Taliban never gave up, and eventually we pulled the plug. Since 2021, the mullahs have been back in charge, waging war on women and girls and cracking down on anything resembling dissent with arbitrary arrests, detention, torture, amputation and extrajudicial executions. Job done.
Next, Iraq. In 2003, as we charged into war with Saddam Hussein, we were told that Iraqis couldn't end up with a regime worse than that of the Butcher of Baghdad. So in we went and ousted him, only to hand the country over, first, to spectacularly venal Shia governments and the murderous terrorists of al-Qaeda – which hadn't existed in Iraq before the invasion – next to Daesh, leaders of the short-lived 'caliphate', and ultimately to Iran, the West's most potent adversary in the Middle East. Mission accomplished.
Roll on to Libya, 2011. Same script, different cast, this time featuring Cameron, Sarkozy and Obama, America 'leading from behind', i.e. not leading. In came the British and French jets, out went Gaddafi, dead in a ditch with a bayonet up his bottom, and then it was a case of civil war, warlords, militias, atrocities, and not much liberal democracy if we're going to be really picky about it. The civil war is still raging 14 years later.
To this hapless trio of western campaigns, we might add the Saudi-led intervention in Yemen in 2015. That was also meant to be a lightning strike, to decapitate the Houthi leadership, but it hasn't gone as well as Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, now Riyadh's de facto leader, assured everyone it would. The civil war continues.
All of which is to suggest that when leaders launch ambitious military interventions and dangle the tantalising, headline-grabbing prize of regime change before us, a smidgen of caution is advisable. As for those hoping for a sudden outbreak of liberal democracy in Iran – or post-Assad Syria for that matter – Charles Gammell, a former Foreign Office official and Iran expert, has a stark warning. Given that the ayatollahs have already driven the opposition abroad, underground or into their graves, he doubts there are many suitable candidates left. 'The patterns of repression, corruption and vice that we saw under the Pahlavi regime have simply been repeated – on steroids – by the Islamic Republic, and there is every chance that the psychological wounds inflicted by Khamenei and his ilk would produce an anti-western, anti-liberal and repressive post-Islamic Republic Iran. Beware those who promise the sunlit uplands of liberal democracy.'
Netanyahu referenced Cyrus the Great when launching a war that will define his legacy. The mullahs will be hoping he proves more like Darius I and Xerxes I. Both kings mounted audacious campaigns beyond their borders, only to find their well-laid plans doomed to defeat, destruction and nemesis.
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