This is the ‘beginning of the end' for Iran's supreme leader. But what comes next?

In his many years as Supreme Leader of Iran, Ali Khamenei has gained a reputation for political caution; deep conservatism; and absolute ruthlessness. But above all, he is stubborn.
Faced with the killing of numerous members of his military high command, the destruction of swathes of the Islamic Republic's treasured nuclear program and with enemy jets operating freely over his capital, he responded to Donald Trump's demand for surrender this week by declaring: 'The Iranian nation will stand firmly against any imposed war, just as it always has.'
'The Iranian nation also firmly stands against any imposed peace. The Iranian nation will not capitulate to anyone in the face of coercion,' the 86-year-old cleric went on.
It is fighting talk. But many believe it is at odds with reality. 'It is becoming clearer every day that this is the beginning of the end of the regime in Tehran,' says Lina Khatib, visiting scholar with the Harvard Kennedy School's Middle East Initiative.
'My crystal ball does not tell me how long it will take. But I do not see how the Islamic Republic – as it has been [for] over more than five decades – can survive this war.'
'The $10 billion question'
Of course, it is not inevitable that Khamenei will fall.
But the decisive moment may come sooner rather than later. Trump on Thursday gave Khamenei a two-week deadline to make a deal to end its nuclear programme and defuse the crisis. At the end of the fortnight, the US president will make a decision about 'whether or not to go' – in other words, to send American bombers to join the Israeli assault.
Any such move would tip the scales of the conflict even more dramatically against Iran. But what would happen next?
Could American bombs provide the shock to ignite a revolution, led by ordinary Iranians fed up with the corruption, mismanagement and repression that has marked the rule of the Ayatollahs?
Or could the supreme leader face an internal coup by insiders determined to hold on to power? Might he even fall victim to the strongmen of his own Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), who control the bulk of the military and much of the economy?
Would his downfall be followed by democracy, military dictatorship, or anarchy? Or might Iranians rally to the flag, unexpectedly giving the Islamic Republic a new lease of legitimacy?
'That is the $10 billion question, and it's clearly at the forefront of everybody's minds,' says Sanam Vakil, director of the Middle East and North Africa Programme at Chatham House.
'Unless the Israelis are going to put boots on the ground in Iran, a country that has 90 million people and is geographically huge, what will likely ensue is changes within the system at a faster pace, and I think that's what they're trying to push for.'
'They know very well that they cannot engage in regime change, but they're trying to unscrew the bolts and see how the dominoes fall.'
Assassination
It has been reported that Trump vetoed an Israeli plan to kill Khamenei on the first night of the war.
The US president has since said he knows exactly where the supreme leader is – and in a less than subtle threat to reconsider the Israeli assassination plan, said he was safe 'for now.'
On Thursday, Israel Katz, the Israeli defence minister, said Khamenei 'can no longer be allowed to exist' after an Iranian attack struck a hospital in Beersheba, injuring dozens of people.
Israeli officials seem to believe the supreme leader's removal might spark an uprising that would bring down the entire Islamic Republic, effectively unwinding the 1979 revolution that brought it to power.
Benjamin Netanyahu has publicly called on Iranian citizens to do just that. 'We are also clearing the path for you to achieve your objective – which is freedom', he said in an address (in English) addressed to Iranians after the first wave of strikes killed top leaders. 'Now is the opportunity for you to stand up,' he added.
Revolution
That did not go down well even among most opposition-minded Iranians, many of whom have expressed fury at the Israeli bombing of central Tehran.
That said, should Khameini be killed, people may well take to the streets, says Maryam Mazrooei, an exiled artist and photojournalist.
'But one of the main problems for the opposition is that there is no leader. The Islamic Republic has got rid of whoever could be leader now – everybody,' Mazrooei says.
The regime tolerates a reformist wing. But over the past decade and a half, regime authorities have systematically jailed, exiled, or killed critics demanding fundamental changes to the Islamic Republic.
And now, the disgruntled Iranians, who a revolution would rely on, are currently literally running for their lives. Many have fled Tehran for the relative safety of family homes in the provinces following a series of airstrikes on residential parts of the capital – and Israeli warnings that more are to come.
And even if revolutionaries take to the streets, the uprising would likely meet stern and bloody resistance. The apparatus of repression that the government has used to suppress previous uprisings remains in place.
The IRGC, police, and Basij militia have spent the past few years preparing to crush what they anticipate will be an enormous anti-regime uprising when Khamenei eventually dies.
Their raison d'etre is to provide regime continuity. To imagine they would simply vanish or lose their power with Khamenei's assassination is a dangerous simplification.
That is not to say a revolution can be ruled out, or that the security services might not split or melt away, as often happens in such moments. But it would almost certainly be violent, and the chance of success is slim.
No leaders
And as Mazrooei notes, there is no Iranian Nelson Mandela or Alexei Navalny behind whom an opposition movement might rally.
Maryam Rajavi, the leader of the self-proclaimed National Council of Resistance of Iran, is almost universally despised inside the country.
Reza Pahlavi Shah, the exiled crown prince, enjoys the support of a small but fanatical monarchist movement and has offered to act as a figurehead for a democratic transition.Even some non-monarchists have begun to think of him as the best figurehead on offer.
But he is not the most adept politician. He infuriated many this week with an interview appearing to defend the Israeli bombing campaign rather than condemning strikes on Iranian civilians.
'He will emerge bruised and battered by supporting Israel's attack on Iran,' says Dr Vakil. 'The fact that he is calling on Iranians to rise up at a time of a war is tone deaf, and the fact that he is not looking out for Iranians, for civilians, considering the trauma of this experience for the people that are living through it, is reflective of the daylight between his potential leadership and the facts on the ground in Iran.'
'If the Israelis kill the supreme leader, the system will evolve, either constitutionally or through change from within. They're not going to be flying in their leader of choice from the diaspora,' she adds.
Smooth succession
The Iranian regime is already geared up for a transition of power.
Ali Khamenei is elderly and ill. The question of succession already dominates Iranian politics, and several prominent figures are thought to see themselves as candidates to replace him.
Before the war, the most likely successor was thought to be Mojtaba Khamenei, the supreme leader's 55 year old son.
Like his father, he studied theology in the Holy City of Qom, so he meets the constitutional requirement for clerical training.
He is a veteran of the Iran-Iraq war, giving him revolutionary credibility. And most importantly, he has close ties to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards, meaning he has the backing of the men with guns.
One IRGC member told The Telegraph last year that the corps 'top commanders are speaking very highly of him'. Another said plans had already been made to crush any opposition to his succession.
Assuming he is still alive, that the Islamic Republic's constitutional mechanism continues to work, and that enough of his allies in the IRGC have escaped Israeli bombs, he is probably still best placed to succeed his father.
The coup
Others might take the opportunity for a less constitutional route to power.
The Israelis have achieved deep intelligence penetration of the Iranian command structures. Rumours are already flying around Iranian internet users about generals supposedly working for Mossad, or being spirited into Israel just before the bombs hit.
But it does not take an Israeli conspiracy to make a coup. It is possible to imagine a delegation of senior Army or IRGC officers, fed up with the old man's intransigence and desperate to make peace, paying a visit to Khamenei and telling him gently that his time is up.
'This has been my prognosis for a while: that either when Khamenei dies or before he dies, some group of people will effectively do some sort of a coup inside the Islamic Republic and come to power,' says Arash Azizi, an Iranian historian.
Runners and riders
One key candidate was Ali Shamkhani, a key security advisor to Mr Khamenei who was reported killed in the first wave of Israeli strikes, but who was then revealed to have survived the bomb sent for him. His unlikely resurrection is already fuelling the rumour mill.
'He is the head of a really financial, political, military empire. He is really one of those people who has actual power with his person and his network, which is not the case with a lot of others,' says Azizi. 'I think he's in hospital and I think his leg has been amputated. So he is probably not in a very good condition to lead a coup, but you know, he is, he is the kind of guy who could do it.'
Like most power brokers in Iran, Shamkhani has close ties to the IRGC – he was an admiral in its naval wing for many years. He also runs his own media empire.
Another potential player is Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker of parliament, former mayor of Tehran, and one-time IRGC air force commander who has made no secret of his presidential ambitions. 'He is very bad at hiding his ambitions to be a sort of strong man,' says Azizi. He has, however, failed in several bids for the presidency.
Shamkhani and Ghalibaf represent a class of cynical, ambitious, and wealthy officials who Azizi believes are likely to shape Iran's future.
They are defined by immense wealth, ties to the security services, and a pragmatic approach to ideology that reflects the general public's disillusionment with the Islamic Republic's revolutionary creed.
But neither of those men are qualified to be a supreme leader – that role is reserved for Islamic scholars – so to seize power they might have to upend the Islamic Republic's Constitution.
The IRGC
The exact result – a puppet supreme leader, a formal military dictatorship led by the IRGC, or something else – makes little difference to the bottom line.
The IRGC – or at least the factions of the sprawling organisation closest to the winning strong man – would retain and tighten its grip on economic, political, and military power.
In the interests of regime survival and personal enrichment, they might give up the nuclear program and usher in a period of relative liberalisation, just as Nikita Khrushchev did away with the worst repressions of Stalin.
That would suit Israel – but not the millions of Iranians yearning to see the back of the corrupt and violent gang who have ruled them for so long.
And of course, there is no guarantee they would change course. There are plenty of people who believe Khamanei's mistake was not to rush to a bomb earlier.
A national unity government
That said, rumours are now swirling about a kind of national-unity government with a more reformist bent.
That theory centres on Hassan Rouhani, a former president and security advisor who is the nearest thing the regime has to a centrist.
Mohammad Javad Zarif, the former foreign minister who negotiated the landmark 2015 nuclear deal between Iran, the US and a number of other world powers, and Ali Larijani, a former speaker of parliament, have also been mentioned.
That is a lineup that might conceivably end the nuclear program, give up on militarisation and the forever war with Israel, and institute some domestic reform.
'Rouhani is the leader of what you can call a centrist, pragmatic camp. He's Iran's Deng Xiaoping,' says Azizi. 'The problem is, of course, he is a mullah, not a guy with guns. He's not an IRGC guy. The question is, can he, as a political leader, put together enough of a coalition that includes some of the people with the money and guns?'
Failed state
There is of course, another, much darker possibility.
If Khamenei falls, but no faction can secure the succession, the country could fall into a period of anarchy – possibly even civil war.
Pummelled by Israeli airstrikes, crippled by enduring sanctions, and riven by ethnic, religious, and regional divisions (Persians make up roughly half of the country's population, with about a quarter Azeri or Turkic people, including Khamenei, and the remainder comprised of Balochs, Kurds, Arabs, Jews Assyrians, and Armenians), Iran would effectively be crippled.
That might suit Netanyahu perfectly well. A failed state cannot, after all, run an ambitious national project such as a nuclear weapons program. Nor would it be able to continue to project influence across the Middle East by other means.
But for those who call Iran home, that would be the worst possible outcome.
The truth, say both Dr Khatib and Dr Vakil, is that all bets are off. Iran is facing a moment of incredible volatility. The most likely successor may be someone no one has heard of, and the most likely course of events is one that no one can predict.
Those wild cards include the ranks of political prisoners held in Tehran's infamous Evin prison, who would no doubt welcome Khamenei's fall. Even, they appear gloomy about what might follow, however.
'I know that some segments of the people are happy with the [Israeli] attacks, because they see it as the only way to change the failed clerical government,' Mostafa Tajzadeh, a former deputy interior minister and vocal critic of Khamenei, wrote on his Telegram channel from behind bars this week.
'But even assuming that the war leads to such an outcome, Iran will be left in ruins, where, most likely, statelessness and chaos will prevail – if the country is not torn apart.'

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