Iran After Khamenei: The Revolution’s Uncertain Endgame

The killing of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in the first wave of strikes by the United States and Israel has thrust Iran into the most consequential political transition since the death of Ruhollah Khomeini in 1989, who was the figurehead of the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

The appointment of Khamenei’s son, Mojtaba as successor leaves unresolved the deeper question of what kind of state Iran will become once the revolutionary generation passes from the scene.

As observed by journalist Karim Sadjadpour, Mojtaba lacks both his father’s clerical gravitas and the aura of revolutionary legitimacy that once surrounded the founder of the regime, Ruhollah Khomeini. Within the inner sanctum of hardliners, his influence has grown largely through his ties to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

According to Sadjadpour, writing in The Atlantic, the killing of his father, his mother and of several family members in the strikes has paradoxically strengthened Mojtaba’s position among loyalists who see continuity as the safest option in wartime. Two particularly feared security barons, Hossein Taeb and Ahmad Vahidi, are said to back him. Both men represent the hard edge of the regime’s coercive apparatus.

Exhausted Ideology

In many ways, the Islamic Republic today resembles the late Soviet Union - an exhausted ideology sustained through coercion by ageing leaders fearful of reform. Both Iran and Russia are resource-rich societies with long imperial memories and grievances against Western dominance.

The Soviet collapse unleashed chaos. During the 1990s oligarchs looted state assets while political institutions crumbled. From that disorder emerged Vladimir Putin, a former KGB officer who replaced communist ideology with grievance-driven nationalism.

Iran could experience a similar transformation if the clerical system collapses under the combined weight of sanctions, military humiliation and internal unrest. A strongman from the IRGC could abandon Shiite revolutionary ideology in favour of Persian nationalism, like Vladimir Putin did in Russia. But a glance at the Iran’s volatile leadership suggests such a transformation is far from inevitable.

Attacker’s Dilemma

For Donald Trump, the killing of Ali Khamenei during the course of Operation Epic Fury was supposed to decapitate the Islamic Republic. Instead, it has exposed an old American dilemma in the Middle East, namely that destroying an adversary’s leadership is often easier than predicting what follows.

Over the past half century, Iran has repeatedly ensnared American presidents. The Iranian Revolution of 1979 and the subsequent Iran Hostage Crisis effectively ended the presidency of Jimmy Carter. The Iran-Contra affair tarnished Ronald Reagan’s presidency. Iran’s proxy networks in Iraq complicated the occupation undertaken by George W. Bush after the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The bitter American debate over the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action consumed the latter years of Barack Obama’s presidency. And the October 7 attacks by Hamas, a pillar of Iran’s so-called Axis of Resistance, dragged Joe Biden into a grinding regional war.

If Trump hoped for something resembling the playbook he used against Nicolás Maduro’s regime in Venezuela, he appears to have made a strategic blunder.

The Islamic Republic’s power structure is diffuse, ideological and steeped in revolutionary paranoia. Instead of a swift political settlement, Epic Fury has triggered a volatile succession struggle in Tehran.

Iranians have often viewed themselves as heirs to an ancient imperial civilisation stretching back to the Achaemenid kings of Cyrus the Great and Darius I. Yet modern Iranian history has been defined less by imperial triumph than by humiliation. In the nineteenth century, under the faltering rule of the Qajar dynasty, which ruled Iran from 1789 to 1925, the country lost vast territories in the Caucasus to Russia following its defeat in two imperial wars. The resulting treaties - Treaty of Gulistan in 1813 and Treaty of Turkmenchay in 1828 - forced Tehran to surrender lands that today comprise much of Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. Under pressure from the United Kingdom, Tehran relinquished its claim to Herat in 1857.

The humiliation did not end there. By the early twentieth century Britain and Russia had effectively reduced Iran to a buffer state, carving it into rival spheres of influence under the Anglo-Russian Convention of 1907.

During the World War II, Allied forces forced the abdication of Reza Shah in 1941. In 1953 the CIA and MI6 orchestrated the overthrow of the nationalist prime minister Mohammad Mosaddeq in a covert operation known as ‘Operation Ajax.’

Psychological Scars

Such events left a deep scar on the Iranian psyche, whose rulers increasingly came to see conspiracies everywhere. Reza Shah, founder of the Pahlavi dynasty, trusted almost no one. His son Mohammad Reza Pahlavi later concluded that Western duplicity had cost him his throne in 1979.

Once in power, Ruhollah Khomeini executed thousands accused of serving foreign interests. His successor, Ali Khamenei, had inherited that worldview.

For decades Khamenei insisted that ideological rigidity was essential to survival. In his telling, reform would not rescue the Islamic Republic but destroy it, just as the liberalising experiments of Mikhail Gorbachev precipitated the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. He therefore resisted normalisation with the United States even when pragmatic figures such as Hassan Rouhani and Mohammad Khatami argued that economic survival required it.

Now that Khamenei is gone, the Islamic Republic faces the dilemma he spent a lifetime postponing. Iran stands suspended between gradual decay and abrupt upheaval.

Among the Gulf monarchies, Saudi Arabia may ultimately benefit most from a weakened Iran. For decades, Saudi Arabia and Iran have competed for regional influence. Tehran wielded networks of militias from Lebanon to Iraq, while Riyadh relied on economic power and alliances with Western states.

Now that balance may shift. For crown prince Mohammed bin Salman, the moment presents both opportunity and danger. A weakened Iran could allow Riyadh to emerge as the Middle East’s dominant power. Yet an unstable Iran - fragmented among militias or IRGC factions - could prove even more unpredictable than the clerical regime it replaces.

For centuries, Iran has oscillated between reform and repression, openness and suspicion. The Persian Constitutional Revolution of 1906, the nationalist surge under Mosaddegh, and the Islamic revolution itself were all attempts to reconcile Iran’s imperial pride with modern governance. Now that long struggle enters another chapter.

Tehran has understood that American public opinion can be one of its most powerful allies. The lesson was learned in 1983 Beirut barracks bombing, when a devastating attack on U.S. Marines in Beirut eventually persuaded Ronald Reagan to withdraw American forces from Lebanon.

Today the regime appears to be reaching for a similar playbook. By threatening shipping lanes in the Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly a fifth of the world’s oil supply passes, Tehran has the potential to inflict economic pain far beyond the battlefield. Its effects are already visible after the Islamic Republic blocked the strait, disrupting the daily flow of nearly 20 million barrels of oil.

Such pressure will obviously begin to tell on American voters. And if Iran succeeds in transforming Epic Fury into a prolonged regional confrontation – as it aims to - it may force Trump to choose between military escalation and the economic anxieties of his electorate.

As things stand, both the attackers and the attacked now find themselves in a strategic cul-de-sac. The 1979 Islamic revolution that once promised to defy history may now be trapped by it, but so may the powers trying to destroy it.