What actually remains of Iran’s leadership?

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LONDON – US President Donald Trump’s latest threat to “obliterate” Iran’s power plants unless the Iranians stop their blockade of oil flows through the Strait of Hormuz is designed to warn Iran’s clerical regime that it faces economic ruin.

But there is little chance that Iran’s current rulers will yield to Mr Trump’s latest threat. Nor is there much evidence that the Iranian regime is about to be overthrown.

Contrary to US and Israeli expectations, there are no street demonstrations against the regime. And Iran’s rulers remain capable of continuing to make key strategic decisions.

Nonetheless, it is still premature to conclude that the war is going Iran’s way, or that the country’s clerical regime is now bound to survive the US-led military onslaught.

The reality is that, despite its defiance, plenty of cracks are evident in Iran’s power structure. And nobody can tell whether a more direct US effort to destroy the country’s economic infrastructure would strengthen Iran’s clerics or result in the regime’s fall.

Since the US-led air offensive started on Feb 28, well over half of the country’s senior leadership has been killed, including the supreme leader and his closest aides, the heads of the Iranian defence establishment and top political leaders, as well as nuclear scientists and the bosses of Iran’s arms industry.

Yet at every stage and on each occasion, new people were immediately appointed, and the institutions they led appeared to continue functioning normally.

Specialists on Iranian domestic politics and security analysts claim that this seemingly efficient leadership succession is due to a carefully prepared Iranian plan which anticipated the US and Israel’s “decapitation” strategy.

Undoubtedly, some Iranian preparations for leadership succession did take place; after all, both the Americans and Israelis openly advertised their intention to kill Iranian leaders.

Yet it’s also worth remembering that Iran’s political structure relies on a system of competing power structures. Tensions between the regular military and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), between the government and the clerics, and between the Iranian president and the vast machinery that serves the supreme leader are not only tolerated but are actively encouraged as one of the key instruments of power.

It would be strange to assume that, after spending a lifetime fighting each other, Iran’s top decision-makers have suddenly set aside all their rivalries and calmly agreed on succession scenarios.

The reason it is difficult to believe such a scenario is not only that it is contrary to how Iran functions, but also because all Iranian leaders know that Israeli spies and informers deeply infiltrate their structure.

So, nominating successors could in itself become the regime’s chief weakness, as happened in 2024 to Hezbollah, the Iranian-sponsored militia in Lebanon, which saw its top commanders repeatedly assassinated, because Israel knew who the successors were before they were publicly announced.

Chances are high, therefore, that the current power structure in Iran looks more solid than it really is, and that the supposedly smooth change in leaders masks deep divisions and future instability.

A perfect example of the contrast between appearances and realities is Mr Mojtaba Khamenei, the country’s newly minted supreme leader and the son of the previous paramount ruler.

Since he was appointed, nobody has seen or heard of him; the only available pictures of his face are at least 10 years old and almost certainly “enhanced” with artificial intelligence.

The claim that he is being kept hidden from Israeli assassination attempts is not persuasive. It would have been a huge propaganda victory for the regime to show his face to the public now, and discovery risks could have been mitigated by recording video clips in various hideouts.

Instead, however, the only two text messages that the new leader released to date were both read by TV announcers and carried exactly the same alleged signature down to identical dots and pen markings, a sure indication that the hands of Iran’s new ayatollah were nowhere near these documents.

It is virtually certain, therefore, that Iran’s leader is either incapacitated or serves as just a cover for those who really run Iran.

The security analysts and commentators who believe that Iran is faring well in standing up to US and Israeli heavy military attacks make two further arguments: that it does not matter how many layers of Iran’s political elite are killed because there will always be others ready to take over; and that with every targeted assassination, the successors are likely to be more hard-line and determined to stand up to the US and Israel.

Yet neither of these explanations makes much sense. If the Islamic Republic had such an endless supply of capable and effective managers, why was it already in such a disastrous economic situation even before the war? Why is a country blessed with an abundance of energy resources unable to run a normal civilian electricity grid?

And, if some “moderate” politicians previously led Iran, why were they unwilling to agree on compromises over the country’s nuclear and missile programmes? The idea that Iran’s ruling clerical elite is divided between moderates and hard-liners may be just a Western invention, rather than a Middle Eastern reality.

For the moment, however, there is no doubt that the clerical authorities in Tehran remain in complete control. Iranian attacks on the oil fields in neighbouring Gulf Arab states and the recent Iranian missile strike on the Israeli city of Dimona, near Israel’s nuclear reactor, indicate a consistent and clear pattern of Iranian escalation, designed to signal to the US and Israel that whatever they do, Iran can respond in kind.

And it is equally certain that if Mr Trump does carry out his threat to destroy Iran’s power infrastructure in the next few days, Tehran will respond with a more defiant volley of missiles.

Yet at the same time, it is also worth recalling that authoritarian systems such as Iran are particularly vulnerable to the loss of key figures and that, although they may seem to be invincible now, they are also prone to collapse within days.

Either way, it’s far too early to identify losers or winners in this conflict.