The rumors about Khamenei have been denied, but the fight for the succession is open: this is who the contenders are
From Iran, for the umpteenth time, rumors are coming about the precarious health of Supreme Guide Ali Khamenei. In the past few hours, he would even have transferred his powers to his son Mojataba. According to some, Khamenei would even die – but it would not be the first time that his death was announced and then denied – and the handover of power for the official announcement would be expected. Only rumors, also reported by authoritative media, but these remain until official confirmation.
These rumors, however, allow us to dedicate a few words to Khamenei the father and Khamenei the son. As for the first, before anyone tries to rewrite his biography, it must be remembered that it is a leader who came to power illegitimately, and a leadership characterized by repression. In fact, it should be remembered that Khamenei, after having held the office of prime minister from 1981 to 1989, was appointed Rahbar (Iranian Supreme Leader) in June 1989, despite not having the religious requirements. In fact, he was not yet an ayatollah and the Assembly of Experts appointed him Khomeini's successor only under strong pressure from Ali Akbar Rafsanjani, who later became president of Iran, who said he had personally heard Khomeini ask for Khamenei to take his place. . Obviously, there was nothing religious behind his appointment (although to be named Rahbar , Khamenei was elevated in a flash to the rank of ayatollah). It was a mere exchange of power between strongmen of the regime, which finally sidelined the Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, whose religious requirements were perfect, but fell out of favor for allowing himself to criticize Khomeini.
Khamenei's leadership was characterized, as mentioned above, by repression. Khamenei was the one who, with Rafsanjani's own contribution and Ahmadinejad's own contribution, contracted a large part of the Iranian economy to the Guardians of the Revolution, the well-known Pasdaran. The hand of the Pasdaran, especially through the holding company Khatam al-Anbiya , is now everywhere, starting with the construction sector and ending with the pharmaceutical sector. In return, the Pasdaran secured Khamenei power, despite the lack of religious titles. They did so through the violent repression of all forms of protest, starting with that of the students of the University of Tehran in 1999, ending with those against corruption and the increase in the price of gasoline in 2019, passing through the violent repression of the 'Green Wave between 2009 and 2011, with the leaders of that movement, Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, still under house arrest without any trial.
In internal politics, therefore, Khamenei promoted – always under the control of the Pasdaran – the launch of the clandestine nuclear program and the missile program, which today even threatens southern Europe. Without forgetting the power granted to the special unit of Pasdaran known as the Quds Force, for years commanded by Qassem Soleimani, whose task is to export the Khomeinist revolution to the world, obviously through terrorism and the financing of the worst jihadist groups, both Sunni and Shiites. On the other hand, Khamenei himself is considered the main translator into Farsi of Sayyd Qutb, the ideologue par excellence of the Muslim Brotherhood.
In foreign policy, what characterized the Khamenei era is its hatred of Israel – shared by its predecessor Khomeini – which led Iran's Supreme Leader not only to call Israel a cancer, but also to set a date by which the state Hebrew would disappear. Complete with a clock, placed in Tehran, which calculates the days and hours until the cancellation of Israel. Obviously, all seasoned with a profound anti-Semitism and denial, which led Khamenei to deny the Holocaust and to promote conferences in which the worst deniers in the world gathered to express their hatred of Jews. The only real success of Khamenei in foreign policy was the nuclear agreement with the Europeans first (in 2003, with Rouhani as negotiator) and then with the Americans (in 2015, with Obama US president, the famous JCPOA). For the Iranians a real success considering that, just as the regime was in danger of imploding due to the weight of the economic crisis and sanctions, thanks to Western appeasement , the clerics and the Pasdaran not only managed to stay in power, but also to expand the nuclear program, the missile program and the paramilitary militias at their service.
Who is Mojataba Khamenei?
This, in great synthesis, is Khamenei's not excellent curriculum. What do we know, however, of his son Mojataba? We know first of all that he was born in 1969 in Mashad (like his father), in Iranian Azerbaijan. Second child, he studied theology in Qom, a pupil of Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi among others, who was also head of the Iranian judiciary and as such has been noted for his violations of human rights. Mojataba shares with his father that he is a middle-level clergy, that he prefers politics to theology and that he has a passion for repression: in 1999, for example, Mojataba was head of the Basij militia when the dormitory of the University of Tehran to suppress the protest of the brave students.
In 2005, Mehdi Karroubi – first Speaker of Parliament, who later became leader of the Green Wave and still today under house arrest, wrote a letter to Khamenei denouncing that his son Mojataba had taken action behind the scenes to distort the result of the presidential elections of the 2005, to bring Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to power. Just as, in 2009, Mojataba himself played a central role in organizing the fraud that led to the re-election of Ahmadinejad and the consequent repression of the protest movement known as the Green Wave.
Little else is known about Mojataba, but very interesting. The first is that he is married to the daughter of Gholam Ali-Haddad-Adel, former Speaker of the Iranian Parliament, known for his ultra-conservative positions. The couple has at least three children (up to 2017). The second and even more important thing is that Mojataba runs the huge financial empire that Khamenei has overseas. A holding company known as Setad , of which very little is known, but which, according to a Reuters investigation, manages assets worth 95 billion dollars.
The competitors
Will all this be enough for Mojataba Khamenei to be named the new Supreme Guide? Although the Assembly of Experts is today an easily corruptible body and very attached to Khamenei, it is not certain that the son of the Supreme Guide can do it. There are other high-level candidates, including the current head of the Iranian judiciary, Ebrahim Raisi, the former head of the Human Rights Council Sadiq Larijani (recently accused of corruption, the current president Hassan Rouhani (not surprisingly) ( disliked, however, to the Pasdaran) and Hassan Khomeini, grandson of Rohuollah Khomeini, who manages the Mausoleum dedicated to the founder of the Islamic Republic.
There is therefore no shortage of competitors, although Mojataba will probably try to use the personal information he has in his hand on various opponents to force the Assembly of Experts to appoint him in a flash ayatollah and then raise him to the top step of power. Or, he might try to bring some of his loyalists up that step, to keep pulling the strings from behind.
Yesterday, the first denials arrived from Tehran: Khamenei is well and works regularly. If this were the case also this time, we will still have taken the opportunity to reiterate who Khamenei really is, to understand something more about his son, the main candidate for the succession, about who moves the threads of political, military and financial power in the Islamic Republic.
The post The rumors about Khamenei have been denied, but the fight for succession is open: here are the contenders appeared first on Atlantico Quotidiano .
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Atlantico Quotidiano at the URL http://www.atlanticoquotidiano.it/quotidiano/smentite-le-voci-su-khamenei-ma-la-lotta-alla-successione-e-aperta-ecco-chi-sono-i-contendenti/ on Tue, 08 Dec 2020 04:51:00 +0000.