Khamenei’s Succession Dilemma: To Name or Not to Name a Successor-Designate?

As Iran prepares for the March 1, 2024 elections for the Assembly of Experts, the 88-member body constitutionally mandated with electing Iran’s head of state, the “leader of the revolution,” there is renewed speculation about succession after 84-year-old Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, which seems likely take place during the assembly’s next eight-year term. If Khamenei’s rise to leadership in 1989 is any guide to the future, rules and procedures for succession enshrined in the constitution will likely be ignored when the Assembly of Experts elects his successor. Nevertheless, public speculation about the assembly’s preparations for succession after Khamenei provides valuable insights into the dilemma facing him: whether to name a successor-designate.

The latest round of public speculation about leadership succession arose when Hassan Rouhani, Iran’s former president and a member of the Assembly of Experts, on November 11 registered as a candidate for the March 2024 elections. Perhaps fearing Rouhani would not just seek reelection to the assembly but seize the mantle of leadership after Khamenei, Rouhani political rival and fellow assembly member Ayatollah Rahim Tavakol immediately called upon the Guardian Council, Iran’s candidate vetting body, to disqualify Rouhani. In a November 28 interview with Jamaran News, which at times has allied with Rouhani, Tavakol not only justified his opposition to Rouhani’s candidacy citing Rouhani’s role in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action nuclear deal and alleged attempts at “weakening the Leader Khamenei” but also disclosed valuable information about the state of succession preparations in the assembly.

While dismissing claims that the subject was debated at the latest session of the assembly in November, Tavakol admitted, “some people in the committees are working on a successor-designate. They have identified some individuals, but they only consult with the leader. Nobody else knows about the candidates these people have chosen, and the subject has not been discussed in the sessions.” In the same interview, Tavakol corrected himself by saying a specific committee, rather than several individuals in different committees, is tasked with identifying candidates for supreme leader. He further admitted he is a member of the committee but refused to answer the journalist’s question regarding whether President Ebrahim Raisi or Assembly of Experts member Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami, not to be confused with former President Muhammad Khatami, are also on the committee.

Tavakol was not the first assembly member to disclose information about the existence and activities of such a committee. As early as December 2015, Khatami said Khamenei had asked the assembly to identify individuals with constitutionally required leadership characteristics, such as “resourcefulness, jurisprudence, and the like.” On the same occasion, Khatami further disclosed that Khamenei had urged the Assembly of Experts to have several candidates for supreme leader “up its sleeves.”

Khatami’s information was confirmed by the late president, Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, in a June 2016 interview with reformist Qanoun newspaper. Rafsanjani said: “The Assembly of Experts has two or three specialists engaged in research. They give scores to individuals, and should the need arise, they can be considered by the Assembly of Experts … The committee is not making any decisions and is just an investigative committee.” Rafsanjani also said the committee had interviewed “several hundred individuals” and “secretly identified two individuals” as potential candidates.

Along the same lines, on June 12, 2019, assembly member Ayatollah Mohsen Araki said the Investigative Committee would not publicly declare the name of a successor-designate “due to previous unsuccessful experiences.” And on June 16, 2019, Ayatollah Hashem Hashemzadeh Herisi confirmed the Investigative Committee was composed of only three individuals. However, he cautioned that individuals other than those identified by the committee could succeed Khamenei and emphasized the committee does not report to or share information with the chairman of the Assembly of Experts and directly reports to Khamenei.

Among these statements, Tavakol’s reference to the assembly’s attempt to identify a successor-designate and Araki’s mention of “previous unsuccessful experiences” with publicly declaring a successor-designate are of particular interest. The Constitution of the Islamic Republic does not provide for a successor-designate to fill the vacuum between the death, resignation, removal from office, or incapacity of the supreme leader and the assembly’s election of a new leader. Separately, the first time the assembly identified and publicly declared a successor-designate was a political disaster.

When Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founding leader of the revolution, suffered a heart attack January 23, 1980, four men formed a secret Cabinet to rule the regime while he was incapacitated. The secret Cabinet was comprised of Rafsanjani, then speaker of parliament, Khamenei, who at the time was Tehran’s Friday prayer leader but was subsequently elected president, Abdul-Karim Mousavi Ardebili, an influential clerical figure who took over the judiciary soon after Khomeini’s heart attack, and Khomeini’s son Ahmad. Once the heads of the three branches of government agreed on a decision, Ahmad Khomeini used his father’s signet ring to stamp the documents.

The powerful quartet outmaneuvered most of its domestic rivals, controlled access to Khomeini, and de facto ruled Iran, even after Khomeini was released from the hospital in March 1980. However, to preserve a semblance of legality and legitimacy, the quartet sought a successor-designate, who ideally would serve as a ceremonial leader and leave the day-to-day affairs of the state to the secret Cabinet.

Their candidate of choice was Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, an old follower of Khomeini’s and a learned theologian who seemed more interested in his library in Qom than in politics. Through the machinations of the quartet, on July 15, 1985, the Assembly of Experts unanimously selected Montazeri (without his knowledge) as deputy leader of the revolution and Khomeini’s successor-designate, a position for which there was no constitutional provision.

However, a member of the assembly disclosed on September 21, 1985 that Montazeri was Khomeini’s successor-designate, after which Montazeri’s star was in ascendance. In his memoir, banned in Iran and published in Los Angeles, Montazeri recalled how people, high and low, lined up in front of his humble home in Qom with requests for him – for government jobs, etc. Evidently, the political elites of the Islamic Republic thought Khomeini was on his deathbed and were shifting their allegiance to Montazeri to secure their own political future. Still worse, members of Montazeri’s household possessed political ambitions that he lacked and began campaigning against the members of the quartet to consolidate the scholar’s position. This in turn caused a panic among the quartet, which began a systematic campaign against Montazeri, ending with Khomeini’s dismissal of him in March 1989.

The designation of Montazeri as Khomeini’s successor-designate was meant to consolidate the regime, deter other members of the Assembly of Experts from pursuing leadership ambitions, and fill the power vacuum that would arise between Khomeini’s death and the formal election of Montazeri as supreme leader. However, when news of Montazeri’s designation became public knowledge, it brought about what Russian revolutionary leader Vladimir Lenin called “dual power,” or an alternative to Khomeini, which in turn made the elites turn away from the seemingly dying Khomeini in favor of the ascendant successor-designate Montazeri.

Khamenei is facing a similar dilemma. Khamenei presumably wants to have his own preferred candidate succeed him, but he cannot publicly name a successor-designate without creating a rival and bringing about a dual power dynamic undermining his own authority.

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