Iran awaits announcement of new leader

Some disagreements are emerging from the confidential discussions over who will be Iran’s next supreme leader. Rumours have long swirled around the possibility of Mojtaba Khamenei succeeding his father, since he’s close with the all-powerful Revolutionary Guards.

A member of parliament and firebrand cleric, Hamid Rasaee, wrote Thursday that the killed supreme leader’s son was “an outstanding seminarian” as well as a trusted adviser to his father and an “overseer of many of the country’s affairs.” He also called Khamenei an ayatollah, a rank he may not possess.

A reformist-aligned cleric, Rahmatollah Bigdeli, condemned what he called Rasaee’s “ignorance and bias.”

“The constitution does not specify a time limit for the validity of the interim leadership council, and questioning the validity of this council is tantamount to questioning the legitimacy of the decision-making bodies of the regime,” he replied on X. A former minister also aligned with Iran’s reformists, Abbas Akhoundi, warned against “a diversionary and toxic debate” over the succession.

“The stench of the power struggle in wartime is nauseating,” Akhoundi wrote on X.