Iran’s Assembly of Experts convened in Qom under the shadow of fresh Israeli and American strikes that had already damaged their own building. In a rushed vote, they installed Mojtaba Khamenei - the 56-year-old son of the assassinated Supreme Leader - as the new Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic. Israeli media, Iranian opposition channels, and multiple international reports confirm the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) applied heavy pressure to force this outcome. State media has stayed silent or vague, but the message is unmistakable: the regime is attempting a hereditary handover while bombs still fall on Tehran and Qom.
This is not succession. It is a farce.
Mojtaba Khamenei lacks the religious credentials of his father. He has never held high clerical office. He is a mid-level cleric at best, known more for business interests and IRGC ties than for scholarly authority. The Islamic Republic was founded on the explicit rejection of monarchy and hereditary rule. Ruhollah Khomeini himself railed against the Shah’s dynastic model. Now the mullahs have done exactly what they once condemned - turning the Supreme Leadership into a family business under duress from the very security apparatus that is supposed to serve the state.
The timing makes the illegitimacy even clearer. The Assembly of Experts met while Israeli jets struck their compound and while the regime was reeling from the loss of Ali Khamenei just days earlier in a precision strike on his Tehran compound. Reports from Reuters, Al Jazeera, and The New York Times describe a leadership in panic, scrambling to project continuity while explosions rocked the capital and southern Lebanon. This is not strength. It is desperation.
The IRGC’s fingerprints are everywhere. Multiple outlets, including NDTV and Iranian International, report that hardline commanders leaned on the clerics to fast-track Mojtaba and block any reformist or rival candidate. The Guard is not installing a leader; it is installing a figurehead it can control. In practice, real power will rest with IRGC commanders who already run the economy, the nuclear program, and the proxy militias. Mojtaba’s elevation changes nothing about the regime’s nature. It simply reveals its weakness.
This moment is the clearest proof yet that the Islamic Republic is terminal. A regime that must bomb its own succession process to survive has already lost the plot. Every day the West hesitates is another day the IRGC consolidates control behind a weak new face.
The United States and Israel must reject any calls for pause or negotiation. The campaign that began with the February 28 strikes on Tehran must accelerate. Targeted operations against IRGC command centers, missile production sites, nuclear facilities, and proxy infrastructure in Lebanon and elsewhere have already degraded the regime’s capabilities. Continuing and expanding these strikes will exploit the very instability the mullahs are trying to paper over.
At the same time, Washington should openly support genuine Iranian opposition voices - both inside the country and in the diaspora - who reject the entire system, not merely its latest figurehead. The goal is not regime reform. It is regime end.
The Strait of Hormuz crisis, the oil-price spike, and the drone attacks on Gulf targets show the regime’s only remaining card is economic blackmail. Naval escorts and insurance guarantees, as President Trump has signaled, can neutralize that threat. But the decisive blow comes from refusing to treat Mojtaba Khamenei as a legitimate interlocutor. He is a placeholder for a dying ideology.
History will record this week as the beginning of the end. The clerical dynasty has exposed itself as a hollow shell propped up by force. The civilized world must not blink. Intensify the pressure. Accelerate the campaign. The Islamic Republic’s collapse is no longer a question of if - only of when. And every day we delay hands the IRGC more time to regroup behind its new puppet.
Amine Ayoub, a fellow at the Middle East Forum, is a policy analyst and writer based in Morocco. Follow him on X: @amineayoubx