Mojtaba Khamenei has been confirmed as the new Supreme Leader.
That type of stunning victory rarely happens in modern wars. A counter-insurgency allows the country to continue fighting.
Didn’t I read somewhere he’s not actually eligible for that position?
Neither was Khamenei, when Khomeini died. Systems like that aren’t real, just a fig leaf for autocracy.
Classic example of “new boss, same as the old boss”. So other than massive amounts of death and destruction and strengthened resolve for renewed terrorism, nothing has been accomplished in this undeclared war.
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This new theocrat and his rubber stamping council may not last very long.
If the Theocracy does get pushed out, it will be a positive at least. It is a horrific regime.
Yes. One of the rules is that he has to have reached the rank of Ayatollah. He is only a Hojjatoleslam which is a rank below that. I have no idea what the difference is.
From a recent CBC report:
Alan Eyre, former U.S. diplomat and Iran specialist, said Khamenei is “more hardline than his father,” while Alex Vatanka, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, said he will follow the “same playbook as his father.”
“It’s a big humiliation for the United States to carry out an operation of this scale, risk so much, and end up killing an 86-year-old man, only to have him replaced by his hardline son,” Vatanka said.
Khamenei was widely believed to have been behind the sudden rise of hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who was elected president in 2005.
Khamenei’s wife, who was killed in Saturday’s airstrikes, was the daughter of a prominent hardliner, the former parliament Speaker Gholamali Haddad Adel.
“He’s going to have a lot of revenge to exact,” Eyre said.
Which is why the US/Israel can’t leave him in power. Once you start shit like this, you have to see it through.
If they had any interest in negotiating for peace, they would have at least picked a more moderate next leader.
Simple: So they first promote him, and then immediately name him the new supreme leader. I’m pretty sure there were some Popes who were first ordained as priests on the day of their being chosen for the Papacy (and even if it hasn’t happened, it’s a possibility that the Church allows for).
If they’d had any interest in negotiating for peace, they would have lost it when they got bombed while negotiating for peace.
It is a problem when all 3 principals are f’d up assholes.
There seem to be only one way to get peace from Donald Trump, and that is to surrender unconditionally (his words), that doesn’t put much wind behind the sails of moderate candidates precisely.
Fair, but I think everyone knows what he said yesterday has little bearing on tomorrow.
He just loves to hear himself in the end.
Untrustworthy inflammatory rhetoric is still inflammatory.
Plus, if actions are the way to measure, unilateraly abandoning treaties, bombing in the middle of negotiations and generally behaving like a complete and total motherfucking dick also tends not to compel moderation on the other side.
Can they just promote him under the rules? I have no idea. A quick search isn’t giving me a good answer but it looks like it’s a determination made by clerics who aren’t part of the government and they might not want to do so if he hasn’t made some sort of objective qualifications.
They can just as easily make him the leader at the lower rank if they are willing to stretch things and not bother with a promotion.
Let me shed a few tears for the biggest sponsors of unrest and terror in the region.
What Trump ordered was wrong, but that regime has been evil for a long time.
Sadly Trump will probably never pay for what he does. Doesn’t mean the leadership of Iran should continue.
I remember reading something, may be from Daniel Larison to the effect that American foreign policy tends to think that other countries’ populations are far more passive than Americans are.
For example, expecting moderation after killing the leaders of the country.
If someone where to kill Trump and Vance (and a bunch of other people too), a school full of girls, a lot of U.S. civilians and military personnel… Would you expect MAGA fanatics to moderate themselves?
No, but we’re going off-topic, start a new thread and I’ll reply.
Moderating
Well it’s accomplished freeing up some Russian oil, and giving Putin a shit-ton more money. So there’s that.
That would be us, not them. (points at thread title) Case in point. This is just our latest rampage through the region. Iran couldn’t do as much damage as we do if they tried; they simply aren’t powerful enough.
There’s no “good guys” in this conflict, not on the governmental level. The good people are all nameless unknowns being killed in the crossfire.