Mourners during a rally for Ali Khamenei in Tehran, Iran, on March 1.
Photographer: Morteza Nikoubazl/NurPhoto/Getty Images
Iran Switches to Survival Mode After Killing of Khamenei
Tehran had a succession plan in place for the peaceful death of its Supreme Leader. Can it keep control now the country’s at war?
Two weeks ago something unprecedented happened on Iranian state TV — a reporter blurted out “death to Khamenei” when he was live on air. The journalist was covering state-organized rallies marking the anniversary of the 1979 revolution that ushered in Iran’s theocratic regime and he’d meant to say “death to America.”
His slip of the tongue cost him his job, but also crystallized the extent to which former Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei — killed in US and Israeli airstrikes on Saturday — had become a figure of antipathy after almost 40 years of rigid rule over a country of more than 90 million people.