When Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme chief for 37 years, was killed by Israel on Feb. 28, within the opening airstrike of the battle in opposition to the Islamic Republic, he was succeeded by his son, Mojtaba.
However at 86, the ayatollah had wielded a degree of affect that no alternative may quickly match.
Senior Iranian officers maintain that each one key issues are run by the 56-year-old inheritor. Determination making, nonetheless, extends past one man, consultants say, guided by a small, elite band of principally present or former senior commanders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.
It isn’t the Guards as a corporation that’s exerting management, they are saying, however a hardened “band of brothers,” whose seminal expertise was the brutal, eight-year battle between Iran and Iraq that started in 1980.
Based in 1979 to safeguard the new child revolution and its chief, the Guards promoted these commanders to generals whereas they have been nonetheless of their late 20s or early 30s. Western assist for Iraq within the battle satisfied them that Iran needed to forge its personal manner it doesn’t matter what the associated fee.
After the battle, they went on to regulate intelligence or safety providers. Most are believed to have some private reference to Mojtaba Khamenei from the lengthy years that he directed his father’s office.
These males are among the many hardest-line figures within the nation — militants not solely when it comes to perpetuating the Islamic revolution, but additionally within the harsh strategies they’ve championed whereas operating the primary organs of presidency repression.
Their shared backgrounds, careers and ideological outlook are one purpose the battle has neither collapsed the federal government nor paralyzed it, regardless of the deaths of about 50 high political and navy leaders, consultants mentioned.
No matter jockeying could also be going down amongst these central figures over whether or not to hunt a practical finish to the battle stays largely opaque. Some shunned the limelight even earlier than the battle. Now they now stay hidden for concern of being focused.
Listed below are among the strongest figures in Iran at this time.
Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf, 64
The speaker of the Iranian Parliament since 2020, Mr. Ghalibaf has served as commander of the Guards air pressure and chief of the nationwide police, in addition to the mayor of Tehran.
Mr. Ghalibaf as soon as boasted that in anti-government demonstrations in 1999, regardless of his rank, he had ridden on the again of a motorbike like an strange militiaman to beat protesters with sticks.
In 2004, he ran for president and tried to alter his picture. “He confirmed up on election day wanting like Don Johnson on ‘Miami Vice,’” donning a white go well with and sun shades as a substitute of his uniform, mentioned Afshon Ostovar, writer of “Vanguard of the Imam,” a historical past of the Guards. It was a failed try to attraction to middle-class voters, and made some conservative supporters suspect his ambitions.
Mr. Ghalibaf is one thing of a bridge between the political and navy elite. Thought-about a practical determine, he negotiated immediately with the USA in Pakistan final month. Some detractors suspect that he seeks a peace deal that can make him an Iranian strongman.
Ahmad Vahidi, 67
Mr. Vahidi is a former intelligence officer who took over the Guards in March after U.S. and Israeli airstrikes killed his predecessor. A veteran, bellicose common, he beforehand served as each minister of protection and inside minister.
Mr. Vahidi grew to become outstanding in 1988 as the primary commander of the Quds Drive, which constructed proxy regional militias like Hezbollah in Lebanon. He’s suspected of embedding terrorism of their DNA. Assaults underneath his watch included the bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires in 1994 that left 85 folks useless, and a truck bomb focusing on a U.S. Air Force barracks in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, in 1996, killing 19 servicemen. Iran has repeatedly denied involvement in each assaults.
Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei, 69
The top of Iran’s judiciary since 2021, Mr. Mohseni-Ejei has a popularity as a dangling choose who has lengthy used the courts to throttle dissent, together with a torrent of latest executions of contributors in anti-government protests early this 12 months.
Mr. Mohseni-Ejei was the minister of intelligence throughout protests after the 2009 presidential election. The general public notion of a fraudulent vote fueled the Inexperienced Motion, a nationwide wave of demonstrations that his ministry helped squash by imprisonment, torture and executions. He was a goal of sanctions by each the USA and the European Union.
Hossein Taeb, 63
Mr. Taeb is a Shiite Muslim cleric who ran the brutal Basij militia after which authorities counterintelligence operations earlier than heading the Guards’ personal intelligence group from 2009 to 2022. Infamous for crushing dissent, the group throughout his tenure additionally imprisoned for ransom or different exchanges quite a few Iranian American and different twin nationals, detailed in experiences by each the Etemad, an Iranian day by day newspaper, and Human Rights Watch.
Authorities violence in the course of the 2009 protests prompted public criticism, with one Parliament member writing in feedback printed on-line, “Once we place administration of the latest disaster within the arms of people like Taeb, who’re extra aware of the baton than with thought, purpose and prudence, the consequence will probably be precisely this.”
Mr. Taeb stays a central determine, though in 2022 he misplaced his high intelligence post within the fallout over Israel wreaking havoc on the nation’s nuclear program. He’s believed to be near Mojtaba Khamenei, having served in the identical prestigious Habib Battalion of the Guards in the course of the Iran-Iraq battle.
Mohammad Ali Jafari, 68
Mr. Jafari, a two-star common, was a navy adviser to the previous supreme chief. Now missing an official position, he commanded the Guards from 2007 to 2019, one of many longest tenures.
Earlier, he had participated in a blatantly public foray by two dozen Guards commanders into political life, threatening President Mohammed Khatami with a letter in 1999 demanding that pupil protests be suppressed.
A vivid tactician, Mr. Jafari, generally known as Aziz, is credited with growing the “mosaic technique” of decentralized command, which enabled the pressure to proceed combating within the present battle at the same time as many key commanders have been killed.
Mr. Jafari additionally performed a central position in creating the regional proxy forces confronting Israel. “The Revolutionary Guards will battle to the top of the Zionist regime,” he was quoted as saying in 2015. “We is not going to relaxation simple till this epitome of vice is completely deleted from the area’s geopolitics.”
Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr, 72
Mr. Zolghadr is a primary instance of what analysts contemplate the fusion of the navy into the political class. A deputy commander of the Guards and a former deputy inside minister with a hard-line popularity, he was appointed secretary of the Supreme Nationwide Safety Council in March, changing Ali Larijani, a outstanding conservative figure who was killed.
The council, uniting senior navy and civilian officers, formulates safety and overseas coverage. Mr. Zolghadr’s new place includes making certain that the federal government’s political, navy, safety and judicial arms all function in tandem.
‘A Brotherhood’
Over the course of just about 40 years, this intelligence fraternity first dominated the Guards, and has now turn out to be “a brotherhood operating the nation,” mentioned Saeid Golkar, a Guards skilled who’s a political science professor on the College of Tennessee at Chattanooga.
“That they had info and intelligence, they’d a variety of details about how the system works, concerning the opposition, about reformists, even about hard-liners,” he mentioned. “They survey, they management, they spy on one another. Due to that dominance over intelligence, they progressively grew to become dominant in nearly any side of politics in Iran.”
Hakim program contributed reporting.
