OPINION — As Israel’s unprecedented army marketing campaign and focusing on of Iranian army leaders and scientists wreaked havoc throughout Iran final week, Supreme Chief Ayatollah Ali Khamenei retreated to a bunker and initiated deliberations over his successor. With the 2024 loss of life of a former main contender, President Ebrahim Raisi, and Khamenei’s current sidelining of his son, Mojtaba, the highly effective head of Iran’s judiciary and former intelligence minister, Gholam-Hoseyn Mohseni-Ejei, is probably going a critical candidate for the function of the Islamic Republic’s subsequent Supreme Chief.
Mohseni-Ejei possesses formidable credentials for making certain the survival of the Islamic Revolution, the regime’s highest strategic aim. A longtime insider, his profession bridges the 2 most important organs of inside regime preservation: the judiciary and the Ministry of Intelligence. He had deep-rooted ties to Raisi, his predecessor as judiciary head, and to the present intelligence minister, Esmail Khatib. These relations mirror a long time of institutional collaboration, belief constructing, and ideological alignment. All three males minimize their tooth within the judiciary and intelligence forms, sharing not solely a hardline outlook however shut connections with Khamenei. With Raisi gone and the regime below siege, Khamenei might view Mohseni-Ejei as essentially the most skilled and reliable successor to steer the Islamic Republic by a second of existential peril. If that’s the case, he virtually actually will make this identified to the Meeting of Consultants, the physique of clerics that chooses the Supreme Chief.
Mohseni-Ejei’s ascent is just not primarily based merely on his private ties. It additionally displays the rising centrality of the intelligence-security-judiciary triad in safeguarding the regime’s continuity. Extra just lately, because the Israel-Iran warfare has intensified, Iranian leaders have shifted their focus additional inward— ramping up inside surveillance, looking for traitors, and shutting down communications with the surface world. On this context, his management over the judiciary and having a good friend head the Ministry of Intelligence doubtlessly present Mohseni-Ejei unmatched leverage over the members of the Meeting of Consultants and different highly effective figures amongst Iran’s political factions.
The Cipher Transient has been speaking with the foremost consultants on the area because the shock U.S. strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities- together with former Nationwide Intelligence Supervisor for Iran at ODNI and power skilled Norm Roule and former CIA Director Common David Petraeus (Ret.) – about what comes subsequent in Iran. Watch the interviews solely on The Cipher Transient’s YouTube Channel and subscribe to ensure you keep updated on how the consultants see occasions unfolding.
Beneath Mohseni-Ejei’s management, the judiciary embraced expansive interpretations of nationwide safety legislation to suppress political unrest, ethnic dissent, and defiance of intrusive morality legal guidelines. Khatib’s MOIS has labored in tandem, deploying aggressive surveillance and conducting wide-scale arrests to suppress dissent. To alleviate some stress from a public indignant about Iran’s failing financial system and petty repressive measures corresponding to necessary hijab, the judiciary has decreased enforcement of some restrictions over the previous 12 months. Nonetheless, the collaboration between Mohseni-Ejei and Khatib since 2021 represents one of the vital coordinated intervals of state repression throughout the regime’s four-plus a long time of existence.
Crucially, Khamenei’s current choice to offer the Meeting of Consultants with three most popular names—an unprecedented transfer within the Islamic Republic’s historical past—suggests a practical urgency favoring survival over course of. If Khamenei values institutional loyalty, ideological orthodoxy, and the equipment of home management, Mohseni-Ejei would be the logical selection. His previous management of the MOIS and present management of the judiciary give him operational expertise in each managing crises and defending the Islamic revolution. Furthermore, his long-standing ties to Khamenei himself—relationship again to his early years monitoring potential “deviation” throughout the intelligence providers—recommend belief constructed over a long time of mutual survival.
Critics might cite Mohseni-Ejei’s function in previous abuses, together with the post-2009 Inexperienced Motion crackdown and his promotion of a crackdown on costume code infractions that led to the Mahsa Amini protests of 2022. Nonetheless, throughout the present regime such episodes usually are not stains however {qualifications}. With the US now immediately concerned within the warfare, Iran’s management might gravitate towards a person whose complete profession has been outlined by countering sedition, exposing conspiracies, and upholding ideological self-discipline by the courts and the intelligence equipment.
In Iran’s more and more closed and militarized political sphere, the trail to supreme authority might not lie in clerical scholarship or charisma, however in institutional command and operational loyalty. Mohseni-Ejei, a consummate enforcer, could be the final man standing when the Meeting of Consultants makes its fateful selection.
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