In the sharia state established by Ayatollah Khomeini, there was no small amount of luck involved in Ali Khamenei’s becoming supreme leader.
Jim’s excellent post on Iran’s new “supreme leader,” Mojtaba Khamenei — as Pete Townshend might say, “Meet the new boss, son of the old boss” — explains teachings by the regime’s founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, about the credentials that were supposedly mandatory to lead the Shiite sharia state. In such a regime, what matters is academic mastery of Islamic doctrine, not heredity.
This has always been ironic: Shia Islam developed out of a dispute over leadership of the caliphate after the death of Mohammed in 632; there being no succession plan, Shiites believed leadership should stay within Mohammed’s family (his cousin and son-in-law, Ali), while Mohammed’s senior companions initiated the majority Sunni tradition of selecting the caliph by community consensus.
While Khomeini’s teaching had doctrinal roots, it was also politically expedient at the time to assert that “Islam proclaims monarchy and hereditary succession wrong and invalid.” The ayatollah was then exhorting Muslims to rise up against the shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. The shah’s claim to the throne, which he occupied from 1941 (when he was 22 years old) until being ousted by Khomeini’s 1979 revolution, was that he was the son of Reza Shah Pahlavi. The latter had founded the family dynasty in 1925, when the previous shah was deposed. (I will resist a diversion into the much-misunderstood two-year tenure of Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh, who was not democratically elected but, rather, appointed by the shah. Mossadegh never supplanted the shah, and the political narrative about a 1953 CIA coup d’état is essentially a myth, albeit one Khomeini used to great effect.)
It’s not enough to say that nepo baby Mojtaba Khameini lacks the qualifications to run a sharia state as Khomeini established it. The fact is: His recently deceased father, Ali Khamenei, was not qualified, either.
The commentator Majid Mohammadi explained the relevant history a couple of years ago:
Before and after becoming the Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei never held the authoritative position required to issue fatwas. His appointment to the leadership by the Assembly of Experts occurred in the absence of a high-ranking mujtahid knowledgeable in governance – indeed, he was not a source of emulation.
For this very reason, the constitution was revised (Article 5) so that a non-mufti can also become a leader. At the time, one of the prominent Shia jurists in Qom, Hossein Ali Montazeri rejected him being a mufti: “He [Khamenei] is not at the level of religious authority; he has no right to issue a fatwa.” Some religious organizations in Qom have similarly rejected his position as a mufti.
There was no small amount of luck involved in Khamenei’s accession. He was a member of Khomeini’s inner circle and, at the time of Khomeini’s death, had been president of Iran (a position subordinate to the grand ayatollah) since 1981. Khomeini had designated another ally, Hossein Ali Montazeri, as his successor. But Montazeri broke with the regime over various abuses of power; consequently, shortly before he died in June 1989, Khomeini stripped Montazeri of succession authority.
That opened the door for Khamenei, who was acceptable to the political elite and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Importantly, Khamenei’s lack of credentials was not just a major issue in connection with his succession; it continuously came up because of the claim that he had issued a fatwa against Iranian development of nuclear missiles.
For a variety of reasons — which are laid out in Mohammadi’s above-linked piece, and which I’ve discussed over the years (including here over a decade ago) — the fatwa claim was always bogus. But it was peddled nevertheless by the Obama administration (particularly, then–Secretary of State John Kerry), U.S. spy agencies, and European governments that were desperate to be convinced, despite overwhelming evidence, that Iran was not really trying to acquire nuclear weapons. Ergo, went this thinking, it was safe to cut a deal with Khamenei (Obama’s Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) even if the deal would merely slow, not actually prevent, Iran’s obtaining of nuclear weapons (while doing nothing about its ballistic-missile program and its lavish support of anti-American jihadist organizations).
The accession of Khamenei’s son is not as fraught with intrigue. The talent pool is thin and, at the moment, job security — security, period — is not something you’d bet on.