Ali Hashem writes:

The latest Israeli and U.S. war on Iran began with airstrikes on the home and offices of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. The premise seemed to be that Khamenei’s sudden elimination would pose a dire threat to the current ruling system. The goal would be to achieve what happened in Libya after Muammar al-Qaddafi or in Syria after Bashar al-Assad, where regimes collapsed as soon as their leaders were no longer in power. In those systems, the state’s future was tied to a single person.

But Iran’s history and approach to survival are different. Few contemporary governments concentrate as much visible authority in a single office as Iran does in that of the supreme leader. Religious legitimacy, command of the armed forces, and ultimate political arbitration converge there.

Yet visibility should not be confused with fragility. The office rests atop a dense network of institutions designed not simply to serve the leader but to constrain him, monitor him, and, if necessary, outlast him. The Islamic Republic is not just a personal regime with religious language. It is a revolutionary system that has invested heavily in planning for leadership changes. When under pressure, its structure is designed to pull together rather than fall apart.

Iran’s political behavior cannot be understood without recognizing how deeply its ruling elite reads history. The Iranian state has experienced repeated periods of political vacuum over the centuries, and its political imagination remains defined by them. Every crisis is measured against earlier collapses, whether consciously or instinctively.

Even though Jafari Shiite law does not accept analogies, Iran’s leaders often use history as a guide, almost automatically. Events such as the fall of the Qajar dynasty, the Safavid collapse after Esfahan’s capture, the chaos after Nader Shah’s death, and the civil wars following Karim Khan Zand’s death all taught the same lesson: When there is no clear leader, the country risks falling apart.

For those who led the 1979 revolution, problems with leadership change were not just ideas—they were real warnings from history. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini did not eliminate the supreme authority; instead, he made it part of the system. The intense debates of 1979 about how to avoid past patterns of collapse led to new answers in Iran’s constitution: Each major body was created to solve a specific risk exposed by history.

The Guardian Council was formed to guard against political drift and to keep laws in line with Islamic principles. The Assembly of Experts took on the task of selecting and supervising the supreme leader, to prevent a concentration of power without oversight. The Expediency Council was established to resolve institutional deadlock, ensuring the system could continue to function even when high-level disagreements arose. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the intelligence agencies were meant to secure the revolution internally and externally, checking both foreign threats and domestic unrest.

This deliberate network of overlapping bodies was designed not just to add layers but to offer resilience: If one part failed, others could step up. The aim was to make sure the country would not rely on just one person to survive. Khomeini put it simply: Keeping the Islamic Republic safe is more important than protecting any one person, no matter how important. This way of thinking still shapes how leaders act. [Continue reading…]