What Happens When Iran’s Supreme Leader Dies? Featuring Nicholas Heras and Nicolas Carl APRIL 15, 2021 The struggle to succeed Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei is growing intense. Its outcome will have significant consequences for Iran, the Middle East, and the US. Khamenei’s health has been failing for years, and his retirement or passing seems increasingly imminent. Current indicators suggest that his successor will be more hardline and less willing or able to rein in the aggressive instincts of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. In this episode of Overwatch, Nicholas Heras, Director of Government Relations at ISW, and Nicolas Carl, the Iran Team Lead at the Critical Threats Project at the American Enterprise Institute, discuss the leading candidates to succeed Khamenei, their policy views on engaging with the United States and the West, and how the process of picking the next Supreme Leader could affect US policy on Iran. Jacob Taylor: This is Overwatch, a podcast presented by The Institute for the Study of War. This is the third episode in our mini-series focusing on US policy on Iran. Iranian Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei has been battling poor health for several years, and many observers inside and outside the Islamic Republic believe that his tenure as the most powerful person in the Iranian regime will soon be drawing to a close. When Khamenei passes away or relin- quishes power, the contest within the Iranian regime to succeed him is expected to be intense, and it will have sig- nificant consequences for the future of Iran and the Middle East. In this episode of Overwatch, Nicholas Heras, the Director of Government Relations at ISW, and Nicolas Carl, the Iran Team Lead at the Critical Threats Proj- ect at the American Enterprise Institute, discuss the leading candidates to succeed Khamenei, their policy views on engaging with the United States and the West, and some of the events that could emerge from the process of picking the next Supreme Leader and have major implications for US policy on Iran. Nick Heras: Hi, this is Nick Heras, Director of Government Relations at ISW. Nicolas Carl: My name is Nicolas Carl and I am an Analyst and the Iran Team Lead at the Critical Threats Project of the Ameri- can Enterprise Institute. Nick Heras: Nick, thank you for being here with us to discuss the potential succession to Iran Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei. So, I wanted to start us off by asking you, what do we know about the leading candidates to replace Khamenei, and what type of notable info do we have about them, about how they view the world, engagement with the Unit- ed States, engagement with rising powers like China and Russia, and who might support them within the Iranian system? Nicolas Carl: Thanks, Nick. So, I think that there are a variety of candidates that we can call out in particular in this discussion of who is most likely to succeed the current Iranian Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The list is relative- ly short and well-known, but before we dive into this conversation, I just want to offer, I think, a very important caveat, which is that the Supreme Leader succession process is very opaque. It could change unexpectedly at any given moment, at least from our perspective. There’s not much precedent for this, it’s only happened once before and that was over 30 years ago. It’s, of course, unclear exactly how this process may have changed now that Ali Khamenei has consolidated his grip on power over the Islamic Republic over the past three decades. And so, this could be a process that is actually very different from the one that we had seen back when the Islamic Republic’s founder and first Supreme Leader Ruhollah Khomeini died so long ago. © Institute for the Study of War 1 www.UnderstandingWar.org What Happens When Iran’s Supreme Leader Dies? APRIL 15, 2021 So, that’s the first important point I want to make. Of course, with that said, we can still have a discussion about who we think specifically is most likely to succeed Khamenei. This could include a variety of regime leaders like Ebrahim Raisi, Mojtaba Khamenei, Sadeq Amoli Larijani, and there’s also a potentially fourth succession candi- date that we can at the very least entertain the idea of, which is Hassan Rouhani. I don’t in particular think that he and in of himself is a likely candidate to become Supreme Leader, but he is nonetheless a very important and influential cleric within the regime. And so, I think it’s worth considering the possibility that he may someday aim for a higher political authority. So, to provide a little bit more information on these four individuals I’ve listed thus far, Ebrahim Raisi, firstly is a career prosecutor and judge who currently heads the Iranian Judiciary. He’s also the first Deputy Chairman on the Assembly of Experts, which is the body that selects and theoretically could dismiss the Iranian Supreme Leader. He also ran against and lost to Hassan Rouhani in the 2017 presidential election. And he reportedly was Khamenei’s preferred candidate, which suggests Khamenei may have been seeking to groom Raisi to someday succeed him. Mojtaba Khamenei is Ali Khamenei’s second son and he wields a tremendous amount of authority and influence behind the scenes. Mojtaba generally stays out of the public spotlight, but plays a series of powerful roles in the office of the Supreme Leader, which is the shadowy entity through which the Supreme Leader is able to basically control Iran and the regime. Mojtaba was involved in interfering into the 2009 presidential election to advantage his preferred candidate, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and Mojtaba thereafter reportedly took control of Iran’s besiege militia to stage a very brutal crackdown on the ensuing reformist protests. Sadeq Amoli Larijani is another prosecutor and judge who was the previous Judiciary Chief before Raisi. Larijani is a brother to Ali Larijani, the Iranian Parliament Speaker from 2008 to 2020, and both brothers are political titans in Iran, and ruled the former government structure for many years together. Sadeq is more conservative than his brother Ali, and he too has a long history of abetting very brutal oppression in Iran. And then finally, Hassan Rouhani, as many of the listeners will already know, is the current president and another close advisor to the Supreme Leader. Rouhani furnishes a career of overseeing important institutions and policy priorities like the Supreme National Security Council, as well as Iran’s nuclear negotiations with the West. One point I want to make about all of these candidates overall, is that each of them domestically has a very long history of supporting brutal oppression and suppressing reform-minded groups within Iran. Ebrahim Raisi abetted the mistreatment, torture and killing of thousands during the mass executions that took place in Iran in 1988. Mojtaba, as I noted previously, took control of the besiege when cracking down on the 2009 Green Move- ment. Sadeq Amoli Larijani, similarly, in his capacity as Judiciary Chief, oversaw the prosecution and execution of many. And, finally, Rouhani himself, actually, in his capacity as the Supreme National Security Council Chair- man, oversaw the crackdown that occurred during the November 2019 gasoline protests, which reportedly result- ed in a wide death count ranging from 300 by some reports, to as many as 1500 Iranians killed. The point I’m making is that all of these individuals, at least in the context of their domestic policy, have pursued very brutal and intolerant approaches toward any kind of serious opposition within the Islamic Republic. And I think it’s realistic to expect very similar mistreatment toward the population if any of these candidates were to someday succeed Khamenei. There are, of course, other individuals outside the four that I have mentioned who could be considered for Supreme Leader successorship one day, this is to include, for example, Ahmad Jannati, the aging secretary of the Iranian Guardian Council. But one of the reasons why clerics like Jannati and other very senior officials in the regime like him are unlikely to at least be very long-term Supreme Leaders, is just the plain and simple fact that they are very old. Jannati is currently in his 90s, and so, any kind of power strug- gle that results in Ahmad Jannati succeeding Ali Khamenei as the Supreme Leader, is likely one that will be very short-lived. So, this is one of the reasons why individuals like Raisi, Mojtaba, and Sadeq are some of the more serious contenders to succeed Khamenei. © Institute for the Study of War 2 www.UnderstandingWar.org What Happens When Iran’s Supreme Leader Dies? APRIL 15, 2021 And that is because these guys are in their late 50s, early 60s, as I said. They are ones who will likely be the Su- preme Leader for many decades to come if they were to get selected for the position. And so, these are the individ- uals that I think we need to be most conscious of, in this discussion, because, of course, we could see an anomaly like Jannati for a brief period of time, but it’s one that, as I said, will be short lived and we’ll ultimately have to have this conversation again when we’re considering the next Supreme Leader. Nick Heras: Thank you Nick. Just to follow on, you’ve given us a really interesting perspective on who these leading candidates could be for the next Supreme Leader.