Frontpage Mag Iran reportedly picks a brutal hardliner as the new supreme leader.
The first attempt the surviving rulers of the Islamic Republic of Iran made to replace their fallen supreme leader, the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, didn’t quite go as planned. Fox News reported Tuesday that “Israeli forces struck an Iranian Supreme Council gathering on Tuesday as the group was meeting to choose a successor to the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.” According to Fox News’ Trey Yingst, “They just targeted the meeting in Tehran where what’s left of the leadership was gathering to choose a new Supreme Leader.”
The remaining high command quickly regrouped, however. Also on Tuesday, Iran International reported that “Iran’s clerical body, the Assembly of Experts, has elected Mojtaba Khamenei, the son of the late Ali Khamenei, as the Islamic Republic’s new Supreme Leader, according to his informed sources who spoke to Iran International on condition of anonymity.”
If this report was accurate, it was a clear sign that the Islamic Republic has not decided to try to win over the disaffected Iranian people by moderating its treatment of them. Nor is it going to make even the smallest attempt to show a different face to the U.S. and Israel, so as to head off further military action against it. Instead, the surviving mullahs have decided to double down on the savagery toward their own people and bellicosity toward the outside world that have brought the situation to this point.
Iran International notes that Mojtaba Khamenei is a longtime Islamic Republic insider, although he has generally kept a low profile: “For years he operated from within the Office of the Supreme Leader, serving as a gatekeeper and power broker around his father. His position has often been compared to the role played by Ahmad Khomeini, the son of Islamic Republic’s founder Ruhollah Khomeini, who served as a key aide and confidant during the early years of the revolutionary state.”
Dr. Eric Mandel of the Middle East Political and Information Network (MEPIN) observed that Mojtaba Khamenei is “widely viewed as one of the architects of the regime’s repression.” Iran analyst Arash Azizi added that the new supreme leader “has been a bete noire of democratic movements at least since 2009 when he was rumored to have helped orchestrate the repression.”
Read Full Article Here… | FrontPage Mag
Home | Caravan to Midnight (zutalk.com)
Be First to Comment