From his secret bunker last June, as Israeli missiles rained down on Tehran, Iran’s supreme leader issued an instruction he had never given before: to prepare for his succession. With the threat of decapitation strikes hanging over him, Ayatollah Khamenei drew up a secret list of three clerics who could take his place and told his assembly of experts to choose between them if he was killed.
It was the first of several key lessons the Islamic regime would take from that war as the prospect of another now looms. Khamenei also picked four layers of succession for all the military and civilian leaders he personally appoints: others beyond that circle were ordered to name their own four rungs of replacements.
