Iran International
The once-hushed conversation about who will succeed Iran’s 86-year-old Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has not only spilled into the open, but has curdled into public intimidation of contender and former president Hassan Rouhani.
Rouhani has become the focal point of a succession debate that appears to be increasingly unavoidable after a June war with Israel and the United States which the theocrat largely watched from hiding.
The dovish former president invoked hardliners' ire with a call after the conflict to open up the country's politics and rein in Tehran's confrontational foreign policy.
Reading like implicit criticism of Khamenei’s military and governance record, his plea was decried as weakness and treason by detractors determined to shape the post-Khamenei future.
The most striking came from Babak Zanjani, the billionaire tycoon whose 2016 death sentence for embezzling $2.8 billion in oil funds was quietly commuted before his conditional release this year.
On 2 December, Zanjani posted a message on X that did not name Rouhani but included an image of the moderate cleric along with a headline that floated the former president as Iran’s next leader.
“They will carry this wish to the grave,” Zanjani wrote. “Iran will be cleansed of incompetence and unqualified managers. Iran needs young, educated, and capable people, not holders of fake and baseless degrees.
The swipe at Rouhani’s disputed academic credentials—and the suggestion that his aspirations should be taken to the grave—was difficult to mistake even without the image he had quoted.
Avoidable no more
It was not the first such threat against the moderates’ foremost figure. Hardline MP Kamran Ghazanfari recently argued that Rouhani should be tried and executed if accusations of treason “prove true.”
Rouhani championed the 2016 international nuclear deal from which US President Donald Trump later withdrew but has a deep background as a security and political apparatchik of the Islamic Republic with broad support among insiders.
Zanjani’s intervention stands out among the criticism: a convicted billionaire, pardoned by Khamenei, now declaiming on the succession—a sign, perhaps, of a system losing its old constraints because the stakes have changed.
Tehran’s sharpened confrontation with Israel has revived speculation that the 86-year-old cleric could become a target. War and economic crisis, coupled with the unavoidable fact of age, have created unusual license.
Zanjani, indebted to and no doubt confident in the powers of those who secured his release, speaks with a confidence unthinkable even a year ago, treating Khamenei’s departure as inevitable and focusing solely on blocking Rouhani.
Until the US and Israeli strikes on Iran in June 2025, few dared to broach succession without the ritual “God forbid.”
Even reformist academic Sadeq Zibakalam has prefaced remarks on the succession with the formulaic blessing—“after Khamenei lives for 120 years”—before saying plainly that Rouhani considers himself better suited for leadership than any other contender, including Khamenei’s son Mojtaba.
It’s just the beginning
For Khamenei, less visible after the war and perhaps aware of the system’s erosion, such discussions are perilous.
Openly grooming Mojtaba risks signaling vulnerability; suppressing the conversation only highlights how exposed the system has become when its future rests on a single, ageing figure.
Without a designated heir—even informally—the system remains brittle, its future hostage to uncertainty and factional strife.
At a moment when external adversaries may be girding for further war, living standards are collapsing and public anger is close to boiling point, stepping forward as a potential leader requires nerve, discipline and broad support.
Few, if any, among Iran’s political elite possess all three.
The result is a succession struggle waged through innuendo: a contest as bitter and murky as any yet seen in Tehran, which may last until Khamenei is no more, if not longer.
Tehran’s unveiling of a towering statue depicting the Roman Emperor Valerian kneeling before pre-Islamic Persian King Shapur I has renewed criticism of the Islamic Republic’s appeal to nationalist sentiment following the June war with Israel.
For over forty years, the theocracy purged ancient Persian history from schoolbooks, replacing it with post-Islamic narratives. But after the 12-day conflict with Israel, officials have turned to the distant pre-Islamic past to rally a divided society.
From murals of ancient kings and soldiers to patriotic songs added to Shi’ite mourning ceremonies performed before Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, Tehran now embraces imagery once deemed heretical by its own revolutionary ethos.
'Kneel before Iran' campaign
Tehran’s Revolution (Enghelab) Square was the scene of an unusual spectacle on Friday as officials unveiled a massive bronze statue depicting Roman Emperor Valerian kneeling in submission before Sassanid King Shapur I, commemorating Iran’s victory at the Battle of Edessa (260 AD).
The event was held under the slogan “Kneel before Iran,” part of what authorities describe as a campaign to project “national unity and historical pride” following the June war with Israel.
Tehran Mayor Alireza Zakani, a staunch ultraconservative, said on X: “Enmity with Great Iran can only end in kneeling before this historic nation.”
Municipal official Davood Goodarzi said the installation would be accompanied by visual displays depicting “other victories of Iranians over foreign aggressors,” including the defeat of British forces by local commander Rais-Ali Delvari, Mirza Kuchak Khan’s resistance against Russian troops, and Surena’s triumph over Rome at the Battle of Carrhae in 53 BCE.
The goal, Goodarzi said, is “strengthening concepts such as national dignity, social unity, and Iranian identity.”
The statue, he said, would remain temporarily at Revolution Square before being moved to a city gateway “where it will stand as the first emblem of Iran before diplomats and foreign visitors.”
Unveiled women were allowed to attend the unveiling ceremony—an uncommon scene at events organized by Tehran’s ultra-hardline municipality.
The turn to the pre-Islamic past
The sharp reversal also recalls remarks once made by Khamenei. In a 2011 speech, he asserted that “all the great military victories of this nation came after Islam,” dismissing pre-Islamic accounts as “things that are not documented.”
In 1987, he had said that prophets triumphed over kings such as Cyrus and that “nothing remains of these monarchs in history but names remembered with derision.”
Nevertheless, pro-government social media accounts have now gone so far as to circulate posters equating Khamenei himself with Shapur, showing him standing with a staff as Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump kneel before him. The caption reads: “You will kneel before Iran.”
'Hypocrisy'
Pro-government figures have hailed the move as a patriotic success. Conservative political reporter Hossein Saremi posted: “Today’s grand Iranian gathering showed that people and the state share one essence: Iran itself. Nothing can take our homeland away.”
Others, however, called the spectacle “hypocrisy.” Journalist Gholamhossein Pashaei wrote on X: “Every year you close Pasargadae to stop people from celebrating Cyrus Day, yet you unveil Shapur’s statue in Enghelab Square with drums and fireworks during Fatimiyya (mourning period)!”
Dissident commentator Hamid Asafi called the ceremony “a perfect snapshot of the Islamic Republic’s contradictions.”
On Telegram he wrote: “A week ago they closed Cyrus’s tomb out of fear of the crowds, and now they glorify Shapur in the same breath. The Islamic Republic fears living history but poses for selfies with its corpse.”
He added: “They know people no longer respond to rosaries and sermons. That’s why they’ve brought history back to the stage—in a controlled costume. If they can’t erase the past, they’ll try to own it.”
The irony deepened as UNESCO formally recognized Cyrus’s Charter as one of the earliest human-rights documents.
President Masoud Pezeshkian wrote on X: “Iran, the cradle of dialogue, justice, and coexistence, can still inspire peace today.”
Users swiftly replied, questioning how such pride could coexist with a government that blocks access to Cyrus’s tomb each year to those wishing to visit it on his birthday.