After Attacks on Iran, New Questions About Its Leader—and a Successor

Khamenei is still by far the most powerful person in Iran’s political system, said [UANI Senior Advisor] Saeid Golkar, a scholar at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and an expert on Iran’s security apparatus. Khamenei created a “personalistic” system after taking power in 1989, Golkar said, which means that he is still the ultimate decision-maker, and no political or military actors dare criticize him openly. “There are a lot of institutions, a lot of groups that are helping him to make the decisions and implement them, but this is a guy who is the center of gravity of the system,” Golkar said. Indeed, open talk of who will eventually replace Khamenei, much less explicit criticism of his failures, is still taboo within Iran, where the government maintains firm control over the media. But in news reports and social media commentary, there have been signs of discontent.