Power over piety: Khamenei Jr inherits Iran’s legitimacy dilemma

Following the death of Ali Khamenei and the elevation of Mojtaba Khamenei, the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) emphasized that the state—not any individual—is the true source of stability.

IRIB’s rolling news channel, IRINN, repeatedly declared: “The Islamic Republic of Iran is not dependent on a single individual. It is a system based on the rule of law and divine values.”

After the Assembly of Experts named Mojtaba leader on March 9, state television pivoted to stressing the decisiveness of the vote.

Despite reports of clerical unease about the process, IRIB described the outcome as reflecting an 85 percent consensus and presented it as both legally sound and religiously sanctioned.

Broadcasts featured pledges of allegiance from the Revolutionary Guards, the military, the diplomatic corps and even the national football team as evidence of unified support.

Because the transition unfolded during an active conflict with Israel and the United States, state television fused the succession narrative with imagery of military strength.

Shortly after Mojtaba’s appointment, IRIB aired footage of missile launches toward Israel under the caption: “At your command, Sayyid Mojtaba,” invoking both his lineage and his role as wartime commander-in-chief.

The messaging aligned with broader official rhetoric, with security chief Ali Larijani and parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf both rejecting calls for a ceasefire and signaling that Iran would continue strikes.

These narratives circulated even as Mojtaba himself remained absent from public view. His silence fueled speculation about his condition, with some commentators drawing religious analogies to the occultation of the 12th Imam, while others circulated unverified claims about his whereabouts.

At home, the messaging has been accompanied by tighter control. Iran’s police chief warned that anyone taking to the streets after encouragement from US and Israeli leaders would be treated as an “enemy” rather than a civilian protester—a signal that the space for dissent is narrowing further under wartime conditions.

References to dissent or worsening economic conditions have meanwhile largely disappeared from state coverage.

Skepticism about the hereditary nature of the succession has been framed as foreign psychological warfare, while relatively small pro-government gatherings are presented as signs of broad public enthusiasm.

For now, the message is clear: continuity over disruption, system over individual. But the carefully managed narrative also reflects the pressures facing the leadership at a moment of unusual uncertainty.

“We are deeply concerned by the first impact that the hostilities are already having in the many World Heritage sites, for instance in Iran, where already four World Heritage sites have suffered from the consequence of the hostilities,” Lazare Eloundou Assomo, director of the agency’s World Heritage Centre, said in an interview.

The organization said it was continuing to assess damage and urged restraint as fighting escalates.

President Donald Trump wrote on social media this week that the United States would “take out easily destroyable targets that will make it virtually impossible for Iran to ever be built back, as a Nation, again.”

The comments were widely interpreted as a threat against infrastructure and other soft targets.

Iran is home to 29 UNESCO World Heritage sites. Assomo said early assessments confirmed damage to four of them, though the full extent remains unclear.

“We don’t know the extent for the moment because we need to continue to check and verify,” he said. “But clearly, with the images that we have been able to receive, we can confirm the damage.”

Golestan Palace: 'Iranian Versailles'

Among the affected sites is Tehran’s Golestan Palace, which Assomo described as “a very important and outstanding palace” reflecting “the grandeur of Iran’s civilization in the 19th century.”

He noted its elaborate decorative features, including mirrored glasswork, and said it is sometimes compared with the Palace of Versailles in France.

The palace served as the Qajar dynasty’s royal residence and seat of power and illustrates the introduction of European styles into Persian arts. Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Iran’s last monarch, held his coronation ceremony there in 1969.

Video images circulating online appear to show damage inside the palace, with piles of shattered glass, broken woodwork and debris scattered across its interior.

Elsewhere in Iran, Isfahan—once one of Central Asia’s most important cities and a major Silk Road hub—is home to the Masjed-e Jame, a mosque more than 1,000 years old that reflects the evolution of Islamic architecture across 12 centuries.

Assomo said UNESCO was also concerned about broader risks to cultural heritage across the region.

“Everything that tells the history of all the civilization of the 18 countries in the region—we’re talking about Iran but there are many, many others even in the Gulf countries—and we are calling for the protection of all of the sites and their importance,” he said.

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood approved a Metropolitan Police request to prohibit the march and any associated counter-marches for one month from 1600 GMT on Wednesday, while allowing only a static protest under strict conditions.

Police said it was the first time such powers had been used since 2012 and said ordinary protest conditions would not be enough given the scale of the event, expected counter-protests and heightened tensions linked to the Middle East conflict and Tehran’s threats to British allies and bases overseas.

The Met said the London march was “uniquely contentious” because it originated in Iran and is organized by the Islamic Human Rights Commission, which police described as supportive of the Iranian regime.

Officers also pointed to security service warnings about Iranian state-backed threats in Britain, saying MI5 and counterterrorism police had foiled more than 20 such plots over the past year.

Previous Quds marches in London have led to arrests for support for proscribed groups and antisemitic hate crimes, police said, though they stressed this year’s ban was based on a specific risk assessment rather than politics.

The IHRC condemned the ban as politically motivated and said a static protest would still go ahead. Its spokesman Faisal Bodi told British media the march had taken place peacefully for decades, but he also openly praised Iran’s former supreme leader Ali Khamenei and said he would “happily” hold his picture.

Britain is not the first European country to move against such rallies. Berlin banned its annual Quds march in 2021 after years of controversy over Hezbollah-linked symbols and antisemitic messaging, although German courts and local authorities have continued to wrestle with similar cases since then.

Following US and Israeli attacks on the killing of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, Iran’s leadership followed through with a long-standing threat: expanding the conflict beyond its borders and drawing neighboring states into the confrontation.

One notable example came on February 1, roughly a month before Khamenei was killed in a joint US–Israeli missile strike on February 28, when he said that if the United States attacked Iran militarily, the conflict would become “regional.”

Today, the armed forces of the Islamic Republic—led by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps—appear to be implementing that doctrine by expanding hostilities beyond Iran’s borders.

The logic is to link the fate of the Islamic Republic to the stability of the wider region: as the state faces mounting internal and external pressures, it seeks to entangle neighboring countries in the crisis, raising the costs of continued confrontation.

This approach resembles elements of Nixon’s “madman theory” and Israel’s “Samson option,” reflecting a strategic logic akin to mutually assured destruction. Whether such a strategy can deter adversaries—or instead isolate Tehran further—remains uncertain.

Several neighboring countries have now been drawn into the conflict. States along the Persian Gulf have been targeted, and missile and drone strikes have also been directed toward Azerbaijan and Turkey.

In some cases, countries that previously maintained relatively cooperative relations with Tehran, including Qatar, have found themselves on the receiving end of these attacks.

The responses of neighboring governments suggest that widening the conflict could ultimately produce stronger regional opposition rather than easing pressure on Tehran. From their perspective, the concern is precedent: if such attacks occur once, what guarantees exist that they will not happen again?

This concern increases the likelihood of coordinated responses designed to prevent further escalation.

The strategy also reflects long-running domestic pressures on the system. Over the course of its existence, the Islamic Republic occasionally managed to regain some degree of public support at critical moments—including the elections of Mohammad Khatami in 1997 and 2001, the high participation in the 2009 election, and the victories of Hassan Rouhani in 2013 and 2017.

But the broader trajectory has been one of declining engagement and growing disillusionment. By the time of the 2024 presidential election—officially won by Masoud Pezeshkian—turnout had fallen sharply, reflecting wider frustration shaped by years of repression and repeated cycles of protest.

Demonstrations in 1999, 2009, 2019 and 2022 were met with force, while the downing of the Ukrainian passenger plane and the large-scale crackdown in January 2026 further deepened mistrust between the state and society.

At the same time, nearly five decades of governance have left Iran confronting multiple structural crises, including environmental degradation, water scarcity, energy shortages, mounting economic pressure on households, systemic corruption and widening inequality.

Together, these pressures have steadily eroded confidence in the system and narrowed expectations for reform from within.

Against this backdrop, widening the conflict may appear to the leadership less a choice than a calculation: that survival at home increasingly depends on raising the stakes abroad. Yet this logic carries obvious risks.

Attempts to regionalize the confrontation could deepen Iran’s isolation and accelerate pressures already bearing down on the system.

Taking into account both long-term domestic trends and the current military situation—including damage to Iran’s military capabilities and the widening of hostilities—the future of the Islamic Republic remains uncertain.

International politics rarely unfolds along a single predictable path, and multiple outcomes remain conceivable. Still, history suggests that political systems under sustained internal strain and external pressure often appear stable until they do not.

As Iran confronts war with the United States and Israel abroad while continuing to face mistrust and periodic unrest at home, the strategy of widening the conflict may prove less a path to survival than a reflection of the system’s mounting vulnerability.

Early volatility has been sharp but manageable, yet the longer the disruption lasts, the greater the risk that physical shortages—rather than price swings—will drive the crisis.

In recent days, Iranian attacks have expanded to energy infrastructure across Arab Gulf states alongside the continued closure of Hormuz.

On March 9, an oil refinery in the United Arab Emirates was targeted. Qatar has halted liquefied natural gas production, while Iraq and Kuwait have each reduced oil output by roughly 70 percent.

Brent crude briefly surged more than 25 percent to $115 a barrel as markets opened Monday before retreating after the Group of Seven said it was considering releasing 300–400 million barrels from strategic reserves.

Prices later eased to about $98—still roughly 30 percent above prewar levels—suggesting markets are bracing less for an immediate collapse than for a sustained disruption.

Before traffic through Hormuz was disrupted, roughly 20 million barrels per day of oil and petroleum products passed through the corridor, most of it bound for Asia. In addition, about 330 million cubic meters of liquefied gas moved through the same route daily.

Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have diverted part of their exports through alternative pipeline routes, but those volumes remain well below what previously moved through the strait.

Energy consultancies including Wood Mackenzie and Kpler warned early that global markets could withstand severe volatility for only three to four weeks without a reopening of the waterway.

Strategic reserve releases could cushion the shock temporarily, but even a 300–400 million barrel release would offer only limited relief—particularly if attacks continue to damage infrastructure or delay the restoration of export capacity.

Released reserves would also need to be replenished relatively quickly, limiting their long-term utility as a buffer.

The gas market is even more exposed. About one-fifth of global LNG trade previously passed through Hormuz, and there are few viable substitutes for QatarEnergy’s supplies. Global gas prices have nearly doubled at a moment when European storage levels are at their lowest since 2022, with facilities less than 30 percent full.

Hormuz also carries a substantial share of global trade in sulfur and chemical fertilizers—a reminder that prolonged disruption could have broader consequences for food prices and inflation beyond the immediate energy shock.

The strategic stakes are becoming increasingly explicit. On Monday night, President Donald Trump warned that the United States would respond “20 times harder” if shipping through Hormuz were not restored.

On Tuesday, Iran’s security chief Ali Larijani responded on X with a defiant message: “The Strait of Hormuz will either be a strait of peace and prosperity for all or will be a strait of defeat and suffering for warmongers,” adding, “beware lest you be the ones to vanish.”

For now, markets are absorbing the shock. But the longer disruption persists, the less the outcome will depend on price volatility and the more it will hinge on physical supply—a shift that strategic reserves and alternative routes alone cannot offset.