Iran’s 86-year-old supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei cuts an increasingly lonely figure.
Khamenei has seen his main military and security advisers killed by Israeli air strikes, leaving big holes in his inner circle and raising the risk of strategic errors, according to five people familiar with his decision-making process.
One of those sources, who regularly attends meetings with Khamenei, described the risk of miscalculation to Iran on issues of defence and internal stability as “extremely dangerous”.
Several senior military commanders have been killed since Friday, including Khamenei’s main advisers from the Revolutionary Guards, Iran’s elite military force: the Guards’ overall commander Hossein Salami; its aerospace chief Amir Ali Hajizadeh, who headed Iran’s ballistic missile programme; senior intelligence officer Mohammad Kazemi; and wartime chief of staff Ali Shadmani.
These men were part of the supreme leader’s inner circle of roughly 15-20 advisers comprising Guards commanders, clerics and politicians, according to the sources, who include three people who attend or have attended meetings with the leader on big issues and two officials who regularly attend.
The loose group meets on an ad hoc basis. Members are characterised by unwavering loyalty to Khamenei and the ideology of the Islamic Republic.
Khamenei, who was imprisoned before the 1979 revolution and maimed by a bomb attack before becoming leader in 1989, is profoundly committed to maintaining Iran’s Islamic system of government and is deeply mistrustful of the West.
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Under Iran’s system of government he has supreme command of the armed forces, the power to declare war, and can appoint or dismiss senior figures including military commanders and judges.
“Two things you can say about Khamenei: he is extremely stubborn but also extremely cautious. He is very cautious. That is why he has been in power for as long as he has,” said Alex Vatanka, director of the Iran programme at the Middle East Institute think-tank in Washington.
“Khamenei is pretty well placed to do the basic cost-benefit analysis which really fundamentally gets to one issue more important than anything else: regime survival.”
The focus on survival has repeatedly been put to the test. Khamenei deployed the Revolutionary Guards and its affiliated Basij militia to quell national protests in 1999, 2009 and 2022. While the security forces have always been able to outlast demonstrators and restore state rule, years of western sanctions have caused widespread economic misery that analysts say could ultimately threaten internal unrest.
Other insiders who have not been targeted by Israel’s strikes remain important and influential, including top advisers on political, economic and diplomatic issues. Khamenei designates such advisers to handle issues as they arise, extending his reach directly into a wide array of institutions spanning military, security, cultural, political and economic domains. Operating this way, including in bodies nominally under the elected president, means Khamenei’s office is often involved not only in the biggest questions of state but in executing even minor initiatives.
His son Mojtaba Khamenei has grown more central to this process over the past 20 years, the sources said, building a role that cuts between the personalities, factions and organisations involved to co-ordinate on specific issues. A mid-ranking cleric seen by some insiders as a potential successor to his ageing father, Mojtaba has built close ties with the Guards, giving him added leverage across Iran’s political and security apparatus.
The loss of the Revolutionary Guards commanders decimates the top ranks of a military organisation that Khamenei has put at the centre of power since becoming supreme leader in 1989, relying on it for both internal security and regional strategy.
While the regular army chain of command runs through the defence ministry under the elected president, the Guards answer personally to Khamenei, securing the best military equipment for their land, air and sea branches and giving their commanders a big role in state affairs.
– Reuters
