After Khamenei
What lies ahead?
Within hours of my article about the imminent Judeo-American terrorist attack on Iran, they went ahead and carried it out. Launching a series of attacks across Tehran and other parts of Iran, the joint Israeli-American operation killed more than 200 Iranians and injured hundreds more within hours. Continuing their seemingly unquenchable thirst for the blood of children, the Judeo-Americans attacked an elementary school for girls in Minab, in southern Iran, killing at least 108 girls.
However, the most significant attack — and one with far-reaching consequences — that day was on Beit-e-Rahbari, the residence of Ayatollah Khamenei, in a decapitation strike. It was successful. The Judeo-American alliance killed Khamenei along with several of his family members, including his daughter and granddaughter. Regime change in Iran has been at the top of the Israeli-American agenda, and the possibility of killing Khamenei was openly floated by the aggressors during the June war as well. They went ahead with it this time and did finish off the head of the Iranian state.
As the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei was not just a political head of Iran, he was also the preeminent spiritual leader of Shia Muslims. Deriving their theology and culture heavily from the Prophet’s grandson Hussein’s last stand against a numerically much-superior army of the tyrant Yazid in the Battle of Karbala in 680, in which he ascended as a martyr, martyrdom is seen as the highest ideal in Shia Islam. For good reason, the news of Khamenei’s martyrdom has brought millions of Iranian Shias into the streets pledging their support for the Islamic Republic. This same sentiment has poured into the streets of other countries with Shia populations, from the neighbouring Iraq to the much farther Pakistan and even in the intensively-surveilled police state of the Indian occupied Kashmir.
The release of details of the circumstances surrounding his death — that he remained at work in his office despite the imminent threat to his life, that he refused to move to a secure location, and that he left his life to God’s plans — has only served to burnish Khamenei’s reputation among his followers. The sentiment on the street is that due to his piety, fortitude, and righteousness, God chose him for martyrdom, the highest ideal. (The number of even my Sunni contacts sharing status updates lionising Khamenei as the last Muslim leader standing against Pax Judaica is through the roof right now.)
Following Khamenei’s guidance, millions of Iranians are chanting هَيْهَاتَ مِنَّا الذِّلَّة “Never to humiliation!” and urging their armed forces to go all the way in staving off the threat to their homeland and way of life from the foreign aggressors.
Succession
The responsibility for carrying out the revolutionary will of the Iranian people will fall on the shoulders of the next Supreme Leader. While the process of selecting Khamenei’s successor will be long, there are genuine fears among his killers that the next incumbent of the top Iranian post will be a hardliner. “The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency [CIA] assessed that even if Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed in the operation, he could be replaced by hardline figures from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC),” Reuters reported on February 28.
That sentiment has some merit. Despite Khamenei’s villainisation by the Western propaganda apparatus, which portrayed him as the Devil incarnate, he was not an extremist. When the former Rouhani and the current Pezeshkian administrations made overtures to the West in search of a nuclear deal, Khamenei let them. It was within his powers to veto such moves. Rouhani even secured a deal in 2015, but it was trashed by Trump during his first term. Khamenei also issued a fatwa in the mid-1990s against pursuing nuclear weapons, deeming them forbidden by the Sharia due to their destructiveness. If Iran sought to enrich uranium, it was strictly for civilian purposes.
There is no guarantee that his successor will be of the same views on nukes and overtures to the West. Now that not possessing a nuclear deterrent has brought two destructive assaults against within the space of a year, any pragmatic leader — hardliner or moderate — would see pursuing nuclear weapons as a necessity. More so when any deals or diplomatic engagements with the West have been revealed to be a sheer waste of time and paper. Both the attacks came in the middle of negotiations.
The possible successors are indeed hardliners. Take, for example, Saeed Jalili. Jalili, a former nuclear negotiator who lost to Pezeshkian in the recent presidential election, is against any overtures to the untrustworthy West. He has openly aired views about Iran enriching weapons-grade uranium and is a hardline conservative when it comes to domestic politics, arguing for greater control. He also advocates greater resistance to the Israelis and Americans. Although Jalili has slim chances of securing the top post, Ayatollah Alireza Arafi, who was chosen today to execute the duties of the Supreme Leader alongside the president and the chief justice, has a much better chance. Arafi is also seen as a hardliner by the West.
Moreover, anyone taking the seat of power after the treacherous assassination of Khamenei in an illegal war will be bound to have an unflattering stance of the West.
The ultimate decision on the next Supreme Leader rests in the hands of the Assembly of Experts, an 88-member clerical body, which will vet candidates, hold internal votes, and elect the next leader. The one who secures majority of the votes will win. We are still some distance from that day, but there’s every chance the next leader will make the Western genocidaires pine for the conciliatory nature of Khamenei.
Regime change?
The relentless barrage of missiles and drones that Iran has been raining down upon Israel and all Zionist Arab states in its vicinity is a clear indication that Saturday’s decapitation strikes — which killed several top IRGC personnel along with Khamenei — have had a minimal impact, if any, on the Iranian response. American bases throughout the region have been going up in flames and the Israeli genocide connoisseurs are spending most of their days in underground bunkers — much to their dismay an Iranian strike went all the way down and killed 18 Israelis at the last count.
It’s not a change of regime when the next leader in line continues the same policies of his predecessor without hiccups. Venezuela had a regime change when Maduro was replaced for a pliant Rodriguez. Iran is unlikely to go that route.
The ones in control in Iran right now are cut from the same cloth as Khamenei, continuing his promise of raining hell on American assets in the region in the event of an attack on Iranian sovereignty. There is nothing to suggest that stance will suddenly change.
While the current upheaval in Iran should, on paper at least, give a fillip to the opposition; however, it is so disjointed and bereft of wide popular support that without the saboteurs of Mossad and CIA, it is unlikely to cease the initiative. The supporters of the Pahlavi monarchy exist almost solely on TikTok and Instagram, making cringe videos from their cushy homes in California and Berlin. On the streets of Tehran, however, they do not stand a chance.
Since the Iranian revolution, the latent religiosity of the Iranians — suppressed under the murderous Western-backed monarchy — has received its full expression. The story of the righteous Hussein standing against the tyranny of Yazid is a limitless reservoir that nourishes the Shia. They see themselves similarly standing against forces far superior and hellbent on their destruction. They will yield no ground until victory or martyrdom.
Nevertheless, It would be disingenuous to suggest Iranians are a monolith and there is no opposition to the Islamic Republic. There is a substantial population which is dismayed with the way things were being run, but just like in June, even the dissidents will find it hard to back the Judeo-American Yazids of our time.
The West may just realise that sometimes it is more prudent to let things take a natural course than to escalate them with gunpowder.
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You dumb shit Trump: you lost this on day 1 (Hooray!). Because the only people who ever understood martyrdom in the US were African Americans of the postwar Liberation movements: lynched in the South, shot in the North. And Native Americans who died defending their villages from white invaders.
No clue, white man Trump that you were stiffening Iranian resolve, their will to kick your ass and Israel's and their asshole puppy Arab "neighbors". Iran's biding its time. What hopefully comes next is more Iranian strikes with their more modern weapons, hopefully an Oreshnik analog, on the region and US carriers and Israel. And more Arab states like UAE wondering why they're still hosting US air bases
I await Iran building a nuclear bomb because Zionazis and their American golem slaves are not trustworthy. I don't WANT that, but I await it.