MOSCOW, March 10. /TASS/. Iran elects slain Khamenei's son supreme leader in defiant move against the US; Trump, Putin hold phone call to talk about easing tensions in the Middle East; and confrontation between Hungary and Ukraine escalates to a new level. These stories topped Tuesday’s newspaper headlines across Russia.
Mojtaba Khamenei has been chosen to succeed his father as Iran’s supreme leader, a defiant move by Tehran against Israel and the United States that signals it will not back down in its confrontation with the two countries, experts interviewed by Izvestia said.
Mojtaba Khamenei’s election as Iran’s supreme leader puts to bed the idea that Tehran will compromise in any way following the killing of its previous leader and choose a figure that the West would find more appropriate, international affairs expert Issa Dalloul said.
The move establishes a tradition of inherited power in the country, where security forces have strong influence, Ilya Vaskin, junior researcher with the Center for the Middle East, Caucasus, and Central Asia Studies at the Higher School of Economics, told Vedomosti.
Iran’s new leadership may turn out to be even more radical and anti-American than the previous one, Vladimir Sazhin, senior researcher at the Russian Academy of Sciences' Institute of Oriental Studies, agreed, pointing to Mojtaba’s strong ties with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Meanwhile, in Sazhin’s words, internal debates about where Iran goes from here will continue within Tehran's power apparatus, but "this discourse is unlikely to teeter in favor of those supporting softer domestic and foreign policy approaches," the expert noted.
