The Resistance Moves West

In his essay “After the Ayatollah,” Hussein Aboubakr Mansour argues persuasively that the Islamic Republic has moved past slow decline into something closer to effective dissolution.

The events that have followed the killing of the Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei offer a glimpse into the power structure now collapsing from within. Having not named a successor, and having simultaneously concentrated authority completely in his own person, he has made it impossible for anyone to fill his role in anything other than name. While alive, Khamenei exercised near total control over both the clerical establishment—represented by the Assembly of Experts formally responsible for choosing a new supreme leader—and Iran’s powerful and ideologically committed paramilitary, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). The two bodies are caught in a succession contest that the Republic's own constitutional framework cannot adjudicate. Khamenei’s son Mojtaba (who has not been seen in public since his father’s death) has been named to the position, but certainly cannot control both power centers, and probably can control neither. As a result, whatever happens to the Islamic Republic in the coming weeks, its underlying constitutional order has already dissolved.

In addition to the internal collapse there is also an external one. For four decades, Khamenei built up a complex strategic architecture of proxy militias and political clients, one whose full dimensions only Operation Epic Fury has made visible. By using his proxies to probe the security arrangements of the U.S. and its Middle Eastern allies, Khamenei provided a much-needed service to China, which exploited its relations with Iran on three levels, each more consequential than the last.