Israel simply executed essentially the most far-reaching decapitation strike within the historical past of Iran. Inside hours, focused airstrikes had eradicated Iran’s prime army planners — Common Mohammad Bagheri, Common Amir Ali Hajizadeh, and Common Ali Rashid. Concurrently, missile growth services and key army coordination nodes have been focused, severing a few of Iran’s communication hyperlinks with proxy networks in Syria and Iraq.
And but the person on the apex of the system, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was not focused. To some observers, this omission could seem inexplicable. However martyring Khamenei would have produced explosive penalties far past the battlefield.
Beneath Iran’s structure, the demise of the Supreme Chief triggers an emergency succession course of managed by the Meeting of Consultants. For the reason that March 2024 elections, this physique has been dominated by clerics aligned with the hardline factions.
Their candidate would probably be Mojtaba Khamenei, the Supreme Chief’s son and behind-the-scenes enforcer. However Mojtaba faces an issue: He lacks the non secular credentials obligatory for the function. He has by no means issued a proper authorized opinion, by no means taught within the conventional seminaries of Qom or Najaf and has by no means been accepted as a senior clerical authority.
In Shi’a Islam, legitimacy should be earned by way of many years of scholarship and peer recognition — it’s not inherited as with a monarchy.
Had Israel killed Khamenei, this may probably have fast-tracked and legitimized Mojtaba’s rise. Absent that, it will be very controversial. Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani in Iraq, for instance, has lengthy rejected Iran’s system of getting a cleric as a political ruler. So long as the Ayatollah lives to a ripe previous age, Mojtaba is each too illegitimate to unify the system and too protected to be sidelined. Thus, he could stall Iran’s succession course of right into a doctrinal stalemate — one which Israel has now made extra probably by weakening his army protectors whereas leaving his father alive.
Shi’a political theology is structured round martyrdom. The Seventh Century deaths of Ali and Hussein kind the non secular basis of resistance and sacrifice.
Had Khamenei been killed by an Israeli missile, it will not have been processed politically however mythologically. His demise would have been considered as a reenactment of the Karbala tragedy. That may have sanctified his son, unified Iran’s factions, and legitimized violent escalation from Iran’s regional proxies.
These teams — Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, and Kata’ib Hezbollah in Iraq — see themselves as guardians of the Supreme Chief’s non secular authority. Iranian defectors have lengthy hinted at inner escalation plans that deal with the assassination of the Supreme Chief as a set off for full-spectrum retaliation: coordinated missile barrages, cyberattacks on Gulf vitality terminals, and uneven operations towards U.S. targets within the area. Sparing Khamenei denies Iran that set off.
It additionally preserves strategic ambiguity. By focusing on Iran’s means to behave however not its non secular figurehead, Israel prevents the regime from invoking an existential disaster. The message to Iran’s mid-level commanders and bureaucrats is evident: Escalation will not be inevitable. There may be nonetheless room for recalibration.
Khamenei’s regime has by no means relied solely on brute power. On the heart of that is the Workplace for the Preservation and Publication of the Works of the Supreme Chief. Whereas nominally a clerical publishing organ, the workplace capabilities in actuality as a doctrinal surveillance and enforcement bureau. Beneath the casual management of Mojtaba Khamenei, it regulates clerical discourse, curates entry to the Supreme Chief, disciplines heterodox students, and manages a patronage economic system for the seminaries.
This technique operates below the safety of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps senior command. The generals eradicated have been the regime’s enforcers of doctrinal compliance. Their presence deterred riot, bolstered Mojtaba’s authority, and insulated the clerical equipment from problem. The strike helps to interrupt this protecting outer layer, leaving the regime’s ideological core uncovered and overextended.
Israel ought to preserve focusing on the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps command. But it surely shouldn’t eradicate Mojtaba or high-profile hardliner clerics. That may danger martyrdom and consolidation. As a substitute, it needs to be to disrupt the infrastructure that sustains Mojtaba’s affect. This consists of severing the monetary lifelines that fund loyalist seminaries, exposing inner contradictions inside Qom’s clerical elite, and quietly empowering transnational rivals — particularly these aligned with Sistani in Najaf, who reject clerical political rule altogether. The aim shouldn’t be to decapitate the regime, however to delay, fragment, and deny.
For the primary time in many years, the Iranian non secular institution faces the specter of a vacuum of coercive insulation. On this new context, figures who as soon as maintained quiet distance from the state could now emerge as energetic challengers to Mojtaba’s succession, probably resulting in a schism that will dramatically have an effect on the operations of pro-Iranian militias throughout the area. Their legitimacy not simply to Tehran’s treasury but in addition to the symbolic authority of the Supreme Chief.
If that authority is contested — if Mojtaba is promoted with out consensus — then these teams could start aligning with different clerics or factions. Figures corresponding to Qais Khazali or Hashem Safieddine, who mix militia management with non secular aspirations, might turn into new facilities of gravity. The end result could be the transformation of the Axis of Resistance from a coordinated deterrent bloc right into a constellation of semi-autonomous and probably competing actors.
In wars of theology, as in wars of missiles, the decisive blow will not be the one which kills a person. It’s the one which denies a fable.
Carlo J.V. Caro is a New York-based author who studied and lived in each Jordan and Israel.