Could Iran shift to dynastic rule when Khamenei dies?

Who will rule Iran after Ali Khamenei? The question is being asked with increasing frequency and concern as the Supreme Leader approaches his 85th birthday amid rumours of ill health, and it will be raised again on 1 March, when Tehran holds elections to the parliament and the Assembly of Experts, the body which will determine his successor.

Successions in dictatorships, or in Iran’s case an oppressive theocracy, are fraught with danger. Uncertainty and instability, with the prospect of great violence, are priced in. Throw in an illegal nuclear weapons programme, the growing risk of all-out confrontation with Israel and Tehran’s sponsorship of the ‘axis of resistance’ (or Islamist terrorist groups, take your pick) across the Middle East, and the stakes are extremely high. Add 40 per cent inflation, soaring unemployment and healthcare costs, a housing crisis and a general stampede for the exit, and the sense of crisis only deepens.

Many fear that the next succession, only the second since Ayatollah Khomeini’s 1979 revolution, will see the country tipping into hereditary rule, with Khamenei’s fiftysomething son Mojtaba slipping, serenely or with turbulence, into the top job. For others, President Ebrahim Raisi is the more likely candidate, with former president Hassan Rouhani touted as a third contender.

There are elections and then there are elections. With hardliners in the ascendancy across Iran’s numerous structures of power, few expect the 88-man assembly, whose next term will extend to 2032, to do anything other than approve Khamenei’s preference, whatever that may be. ‘The hardliners have positioned themselves for the transition,’ says Fawaz Gerges, professor of international relations at the London School of Economics. Whoever wins out, the rich and powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps will continue to dominate.

Marie Abdi, an Iranian political researcher, points to Khamenei’s micro-managing political interventions in minor issues such as vaccination, television programming, sports teams and school textbooks as evidence that this is not a man to stand back and let others make key decisions.