SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is dead. Whether the regime he led survives may depend on what happens in the coming days and weeks, in particular, one question - who will take his place and lead it? For a look at how the succession process plays out in Iran, I am joined by Mehrzad Boroujerdi, an Iran scholar at the Missouri University of Science and Technology. Welcome to the show.
MEHRZAD BOROUJERDI: Thanks for having me, Scott.
DETROW: Let's start - just so we can understand how this would work in normal times, in Iran, citizens vote in elections for Parliament and president, but ultimately power rests with the supreme leader. How is the supreme leader normally chosen?
BOROUJERDI: Right. So the supreme leader is the focal point of Iranian politics, and theoretically, based on the Constitution, he is supposed to be approved by an 88-member of assembly of religious experts. And these are mainly sort of elderly folks in Iran. The joke in Iran is when you ask - what is the average age of members of religious experts? - people say, deceased. The oldest member of that council presently is 98 years old. These folks are supposed to be deciding who the next supreme leader is. Just this morning, we got news that Israeli and American bombs have destroyed the headquarters of this assembly in the holy city of Qom. So we are not quite clear as to how this assembly is going to meet, would they be voting online, whether Ayatollah Khamenei had made any recommendation to them that was not made public. So this is really the most serious crisis of succession, considering the fact that they have to make a decision during wartime with these type of challenges in front of them.
DETROW: Right. Many of them seem to be being targeted by U.S. and Israeli military action. So it seems like the basic premise here of getting together to talk and meet seems incredibly difficult.
BOROUJERDI: Correct.
DETROW: We've been talking about the Assembly of Experts. I want to talk about another power setter in Iran, and that is the Revolutionary Guard Corps. What are you seeing? What are you thinking about what their role is in this moment, given this massive power vacuum and given the instability in the country?
BOROUJERDI: Yes. So the Revolutionary Guards really is the body that must deal with any potential unrest sparked by Ayatollah Khamenei's death, the whole succession interlude that we are witnessing right now and any eventual consolidation that must take place. This is assuming that the, you know, regime survives. This is also the body that is going to be losing the most. You know, there is a phenomena of officers' economy in Iran. These folks have benefited handsomely from sanction busting. And so the question right now is that, how will they deal with the next supreme leader chosen by the Assembly of Experts? Will they exercise veto power if whoever is chosen is not to their liking, or if this person is chosen, will they really maintain agenda setting power and basically telling an unexperienced, you know, newbie how he should be conducting himself as the next supreme leader? So yes, IRGC, or the Revolutionary Guard, is really the force to look at at this critical moment.
DETROW: What do we know about the most likely contenders for the role of supreme leader, and what do we need to know about them in terms of, you know, what their leadership could mean for the future of Iran?
BOROUJERDI: Right. So again, because of the opaque process of selecting a leader, you know, this is all a guessing on our part. I will mention three individuals that are on my radar. One is, of course, the son of Ayatollah Khamenei, who, you know, is sort of the ultimate insider for the job, but he has not really held any type of official elected or appointed offices. And because of his junior standing in the clerical hierarchy, his selection will also rattle the rank and files of the clerical and political class. The second individual is a member who was very much favored by Ayatollah Khamenei by the name of Alireza Arafi. This guy was given - entrusted with important positions, including being in charge of all the religious seminaries in the country, which is, of course, a rather important political and clerical task. He is the - also currently a member of that three-member council that are supposed to be taking care of issues confronting the country until the next supreme leader is chosen. And finally, I would say a former head of the judiciary, a gentleman by the name Ayatollah Sadeq Larijani. He comes from a well-established family and therefore - his brother also currently is the national security adviser. So he has, you know, sort of the pedigree in terms of his religious standing, etc., and family connections, ties to the clerical establishment that might make him a suitable candidate.
DETROW: You said at one point, if the regime survives. There's this tremendous military pressure being put on Iran right now. Walk us through what it would take for the regime to actually collapse in Iran.
BOROUJERDI: Yeah, I think, you know, we need to keep in mind that Iran really was not a one-bullet state. We see that even after the demise of the supreme leader and many of the high military officials, the country is still continuing. They are firing missiles, etc. Law and order is still more or less there, and it hasn't collapsed yet. I think we have to keep in mind that for a regime to collapse, you need to have a serious, you know, opposition force that is able to play the role of a, you know, rival government and take over, etc. At this moment, as we speak, there is really no organized opposition inside the country. No part of the Iranian territory is under the control of an opposition force. And even though there is a general popular discontent, this is not a, you know, organized or sustained opposition. It has been very episodic over the last 40 years.
DETROW: That's interesting. For all of the widespread protests that we have seen rise up again and again, a clear opposition group has not been able to form.
BOROUJERDI: That's right. You know, the son of the former shah, you know, has a lot of sympathy both outside and, you know, inside the country. He has, you know, of course, a symbolic capital as the inheritor of that thousands of years of monarchy in Iran. But at least so far, we have not really seen that he has the organizational muscle to be able to change the facts on the ground or try to unify the opposition. So that seems to be a liability. Furthermore, there are concerns as to whether we might see more or less a repeat of the Venezuelan scenario, meaning the Trump administration reaching to one of those members of the Revolutionary Guards, etc., and trying to come to terms rather than, you know, see the country really go into a chaos, considering that it's a country of 90 million people and geographically larger than Iraq and Afghanistan combined.
DETROW: That is Mehrzad Boroujerdi, the co-author of "Postrevolutionary Iran: A Political Handbook" and vice provost and dean of the College of Arts Sciences and Education at Missouri S&T. Thank you so much for helping us understand all of this.
BOROUJERDI: Thanks for having me.
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