LONDON: Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, was killed on Saturday along with much of the Iranian regime’s senior civilian and military leadership. But, thanks to Iran’s “mosaic” leadership structure, the regime itself is far from dead.
When Iran’s first supreme leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, died of natural causes in 1989, his successor, Khamenei, took office the very next day.
Now Khamenei is dead, killed along with dozens of members of his family and other senior Iranian leaders in a series of US and Israeli attacks on targets across Tehran. Days later, the succession question remains unanswered.
But this, experts suggest, does not mean that Iran is drifting rudderless in a power vacuum — or that cutting off the head will kill the snake.
“The Iranian regime is a system that was built to last,” said Dr Burcu Ozcelik, a senior research fellow at the London-based Royal United Services Institute.
