Iran’s new supreme leader issues worrying threat in first statement – The Hook news

His emergence also sharpens the succession story that had been building for years in Iran. Even before the war, Mojtaba Khamenei’s name circulated as one of the most serious potential heirs to his ageing father, though the possibility of a father-to-son succession carried obvious sensitivities inside a republic founded in revolution and publicly hostile to dynastic rule. Reuters reported that he had long been seen as a top candidate because of his influence inside the clerical establishment and the Revolutionary Guards. The war, and the killing of the elder Khamenei, collapsed what might otherwise have been a prolonged and secretive succession process into a matter of days. The result is a new supreme leader who inherits power in the middle of bombardment, without a visible political honeymoon and without having had the chance to build a broad public mandate.