KHAMENEI’S SON AT THE FORE
The deal with survival has repeatedly been put to the take a look at. Khamenei has deployed the Revolutionary Guards and its affiliated Basij militia to quell nationwide protests in 1999, 2009 and 2022.
Nonetheless, whereas the safety forces have all the time been capable of outlast demonstrators and restore state rule, years of Western sanctions have triggered widespread financial distress that analysts say may in the end threaten inside unrest.
The stakes may barely be larger for Khamenei, who faces an escalating war with Israel, which has focused nuclear and army websites and personnel with air assaults, drawing retaliatory Iranian missile fireplace, insiders and analysts mentioned.
The 5 individuals aware of Khamenei’s decision-making course of careworn that different insiders who haven’t been focused by Israel’s strikes stay necessary and influential, together with high advisers on political, financial and diplomatic points.
Khamenei designates such advisers to deal with points as they come up, extending his attain instantly into a big selection of establishments spanning army, safety, cultural, political and financial domains, two of the sources mentioned.
Working this manner, together with in our bodies nominally underneath the elected president, means Khamenei’s workplace is usually concerned not solely within the greatest questions of state however in executing even minor initiatives, the sources mentioned.
His son Mojtaba has over the previous 20 years grown ever extra central to this course of, the sources mentioned, constructing a job that cuts between the personalities, factions and organisations concerned to coordinate on particular points, the sources mentioned.
A mid-ranking cleric seen by some insiders as a possible successor to his ageing father, Mojtaba has constructed shut ties with the Guards, giving him added leverage inside throughout Iran’s political and safety equipment, the sources mentioned.
Ali Asghar Hejazi, the deputy of political safety affairs at Khamenei’s workplace, has been concerned in delicate safety choices and is usually described as probably the most highly effective intelligence official in Iran, the sources mentioned.
In the meantime, the top of Khamenei’s workplace, Mohammad Golpayegani, in addition to former Iranian overseas ministers Ali Akbar Velayati and Kamal Kharazi, and ex-parliament speaker Ali Larijani, stay trusted confidants on diplomatic and home insurance policies points such because the nuclear dispute, the sources mentioned.
The lack of the Revolutionary Guards commanders nonetheless decimates the highest ranks of a army organisation that he has put on the centre of energy since changing into supreme chief in 1989, counting on it for each inside safety and Iran’s regional technique.
Whereas the common military chain of command runs via the defence ministry underneath the elected president, the Guards reply personally to Khamenei, securing one of the best army tools for his or her land, air and sea branches and giving their commanders a serious state function.
As he faces some of the harmful moments within the Islamic Republic’s historical past, Khamenei finds himself additional remoted by the latest losses different key advisers within the area as Iran’s “Axis of Resistance” coalition has been hammered by Israel.
Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah, who was personally near the Iranian chief, was killed by an Israeli airstrike in September last year, and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was overthrown by rebels in December.
