President Donald Trump said Thursday he needs to be “involved” in appointing Iran’s next leader and will not accept a successor who continues the policies of Ayatollah Khamenei, who was killed in a U.S.-Israeli attack on Saturday.
What does Trump mean and how feasible are his expectations? Some analysts say:
Is Trump serious? “It’s clear that President Trump is sending a signal to Tehran that he wants to fight until a leader that Tehran accepts emerges,” Arash Azizi, an Iranian-American historian and author who teaches at Yale University, told CNN.
“This is not a war over nuclear weapons, this is not a war over missile capabilities…This is a war over the leadership of Iran. This is a war over who rules Tehran.”
President Trump cited Venezuela as an example of what regime change would look like. But Iran is not Venezuela.
Dramatically different: “The comparison with Venezuela is eloquent. It shows a fundamental misunderstanding of Iran’s political structure, which is much stronger and more resilient than the Maduro regime,” said Ali Baez, Crisis Group’s Iran Project Director.
“Any Iranian leader who attempts to emulate Delcy Rodriguez would be committing political suicide.”
Iran’s state structure, society and military are “fundamentally different,” Behnam Ben Taleburu, senior director of the Iran program at the Defense Democratic Foundation, told CNN.
Iran’s institutions are still functioning, Tabul said, and even without a supreme leader or commander in chief, the regime is “fighting an ever-expanding missile and drone war.”
A three-member interim leadership council will take over the supreme leader’s authority, and a group of 88 clergy known as the Assembly of Experts will meet virtually to elect a new leader.
“Part of the reason why the regime continues to drag its feet despite being so weak is that there is now a symbiotic relationship between political and military groups, which gives them an incentive to cooperate and survive,” Tabur added.
Power struggle: While these groups are trying to demonstrate continuity, there is a “fierce struggle over who can be the supreme leader,” Azizi said.
“I think the regime has every incentive for the remnants of that deep state and the remnants of its political and military elite to come forward to rally against it,” Taburu added, whether or not it targets the new leader.
The late supreme leader’s son Mojtaba Khamenei has emerged as the frontrunner. He has strong ties to the Revolutionary Guards and is known to wield significant influence behind the scenes.
But President Trump has already said that Mojtaba Khamenei is “unacceptable.”
“He has actually upped the stakes. Saying ‘I need a say’ means that the next leader has to be someone he accepts or he will suffer in the face,” Azizi said.
