The Middle East is boiling. Gaza continues to be hammered and Iran’s decades-long hostility with Israel has reached dangerous new heights in recent weeks with undisguised military strikes on their territory.
As the crisis unfolds, a critical question arises and that is who decides Iran’s moves.
While the country of almost 90 million people appears to be under the strict control of a single cleric, the ruling elite of the Islamic Republic has actually entered a period of significant change. As factions prepare for a battle to succeed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the regime’s future is increasingly being shaped by its armed forces and hardliners, the Financial Times finds in a lengthy article.
The role of Khamenei
Khamenei is undoubtedly the man who has the final say in making decisions on both domestic and foreign matters.
What he preaches is how the Islamic world must be autonomous in its struggle for justice and defends Iran’s foreign and military policy, as well as a controversial nuclear programwhich states that it is purely for peaceful purposes, citing religious texts.
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But Khamenei is also a realist and has heeded the guidance of his predecessor and mentor, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, that the survival of the regime outweighs the importance of even basic Islamic principles.
Khamenei takes calculated risks when his opponents cross red lines. After the US in 2020 killed Qassem Soleimani, its beloved Revolutionary Guard commander, it authorized a missile attack on a US base in Iraq that injured more than 100 soldiers but caused no deaths.
His latest time “gamble” – a departure from the established approach of “strategic patience” – came in the wake of the Israeli attack on Iran’s consulate in Damascus on April 1. Believing it was an attack on Iranian soil, Khamenei authorized Iran’s first direct strike on Israellaunching a barrage of more than 300 missiles and drones.
Even this attack, however, was seen by Tehran as designed to de-escalate while avoiding heavy casualties. Iranian diplomats sent messages warning of retaliation while stressing the need for de-escalation. After Israel’s retaliation on Friday, Iran’s public reaction was mild, signaling that the regime wanted to avoid a wider conflict.
Despite his age, Khamenei remains active, delivering lengthy speeches and appearing in public at times without his cane. An avid reader of world history, philosophy and literature, Khamenei seeks to make Iran, which waged war against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in the 1980s, a prominent regional power.
He keeps hardliners in important positions and has expressed his satisfaction with the president Ibrahim Raisi, who was elected in 2021 with a record low turnout, which was seen as a signal of public discontent. Unlike previous heads of government, Raisi has not challenged the supreme leader and has followed his guidelines closely.
The Revolutionary Guards
At the same time, Khamenei controls the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and has helped transform them into one of Iran’s most important – if not the most important – institutions, the Financial Times points out. Guard commanders are loyal to him as head of the armed forces, as well as to his ideology.
However, he listens to their advice, even in civilian matters. The Guards serve as Khamenei’s primary mechanism for exercising power in Iran and the Middle East. Their influence plays a role in foreign policy, the economy, cultural and social issues, and domestic politics. In essence, that is, constitute a powerful shadow government.
Is Khamenei and the Guards pushing for a general conflict with the US and Israel?
Taking a confrontational stance throughout his nearly 35-year tenure, Khamenei has sought to systematically antagonize and undermine the US and Israel – but without provoking open war.
Supporting organizations such as Hamas and the Hezbollah across the Middle East, has vowed to drive the US out of the region. While US intelligence has found no evidence that Iran was involved in the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel, Tehran has supported the attacks against Israel in retaliation for the Gaza invasion. However, Lebanon’s Hezbollah, Iran’s main proxy, has shown caution in its skirmishes with Israel, avoiding a full-scale conflict.
Khamenei’s reticence about a full-scale war also applies to some top Guards officers who served during the Iran-Iraq war. When Iran fired missiles at Israel on April 13, it was the Guards, not the State Department, that summoned the Swiss ambassador to deliver a message to the US, signaling Iran’s reluctance to escalate hostilities, according to a senior official.
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The role of the rest of Iran’s clerics
Iran’s clerics provide religious legitimacy to the country’s rulers, including the supreme leader, who must be a Shiite Muslim cleric. But most of them have little influence on day-to-day decisions, says the Financial Times article.
THE Assembly of Experts, consisting of 88 clerics, is responsible for appointing the next leader after Khamenei’s death. It is also supposed to monitor his actions, although he has never exercised any supervision.
Mainly concentrated in the holy cities Com and Mashadclerics prioritize religious studies and focus on cultural and social issues such as the role of women, the imposition of the hijab, restrictions on music and the prohibition of alcohol.
However, the popularity of the clergy, whose numbers have grown to hundreds of thousands studying and working in state-funded institutions, has recently declined.
The role of reformers and centrists in Iran’s political landscape
Since 1997, Iranian liberals and centrists have tried to persuade Khamenei to allow political and economic reforms. However, the reform initiatives by Mohammed Khatamithe former president, were blocked by hard-liners who branded them as plans to undermine the Islamic Republic and align it with the West.
Reform candidates were prevented from contesting presidential and parliamentary elections. The regime remained steadfast even as reformers sought compromise and backed centrist Hassan Rouhani, who won two terms as president and helped broker the 2015 nuclear deal with world powers that eased sanctions in exchange for control over Iran’s nuclear programs. .
The failure of this agreement, torpedoed by former US President Donald Trump, helped the hardliners consolidate their control over all branches of the state. At least three major rounds of anti-regime protests across the country since 2009 have been quelled, with hundreds of deaths.
Reformers want to reduce tensions – both with the US and across the Middle East – to prioritize economic growth and attract foreign investment. But die-hards see this as Trojan horse that would allow America to change the regime in Tehran. Hardliners favor partnerships with Russia and China, arguing that US sanctions against Iran help the country strengthen its self-reliance.
Khamenei, the Financial Times concludes, maintained relations with some of Iran’s reformist figures both before and after the revolution. But he has not allowed them to take positions of influence recently, relying on hardliners to protect his vision for Iran, both before and after his death.
