Sheltering in a Bunker, Iran's Supreme Leader Names Potential Successors
Wary of assassination, Iran's supreme leader mostly speaks with his commanders through a trusted aide now, suspending electronic communications to make it harder to find him, three Iranian officials familiar with his emergency war plans say.
Ensconced in a bunker, the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has picked an array of replacements down his chain of miliary command in case more of his valued lieutenants are killed.
And in a remarkable move, the officials add, Ayatollah Khamenei has even named three senior clerics as candidates to succeed him should he be killed, as well — perhaps the most telling illustration of the precarious moment he and his three-decade rule are facing.
Ayatollah Khamenei has taken an extraordinary series of steps to preserve the Islamic Republic ever since Israel launched a series of surprise attacks last Friday.
Though only a week old, the Israeli strikes are the biggest military assault on Iran since its war with Iraq in the 1980s, and the effect on the nation's capital, Tehran, has been particularly fierce. In only a few days, the Israeli attacks have been more intense and have caused more damage in Tehran than Saddam Hussein did in his entire eight-year war against Iran.
Iran appears to have overcome its initial shock, reorganizing enough to launch daily counterstrikes of its own on Israel, hitting a hospital, the Haifa oil refinery, religious buildings and homes.
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Guarded by a unit no one knew existed, Khamenei lives in fear
Iran's supreme leader has been moved to a highly secure location where he is under the protection of a top-secret elite unit, The Telegraph has learned. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has ruled Iran since 1989, has entrusted his survival to a previously unknown group of deeply vetted bodyguards, amid increasingly overt threats from Israel on his life, according to officials in Tehran. Believing Israeli intelligence has comprehensively penetrated the regime, the unit was kept so secret that even senior officials within the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) were unaware of its existence. 'He's not hiding from death, he's not in a bunker,' said one Iranian official. 'But his life is in danger, and there is a unit responsible for his protection that no one even knew existed to avoid any chance of infiltration.' Khamenei has long spoken of his impending 'martyrdom' and is believed to have expected that Israel would one day attempt to assassinate him. But the killing of at least 11 senior military officers and 14 nuclear scientists in targeted strikes since Israel launched hostilities a week ago has accentuated the risk. Following a missile strike on a hospital in Beersheba on Thursday, the Israeli government has grown more explicit in its calls for Khamenei's death. Credit: ABC News Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, has refused to rule out an attempt to kill him, saying it 'could bring an end to the conflict'. His defence minister, Israel Katz, went further, calling him a 'modern Hitler' who 'cannot be allowed to continue existing'. Although Donald Trump reportedly vetoed an Israeli plan to assassinate Khamenei, the US president has also adopted more threatening rhetoric in recent days, saying on Tuesday: 'We know exactly where the so-called 'supreme leader' is hiding. Mr Trump added that the US had no plans to target Khamenei, 'at least not for now', but described him as an 'easy target' should he change his mind. For either Israel or the United States to undertake a mission of such magnitude, they would first have to locate Khamenei. Despite reports that regime officials were preparing to flee to Moscow, there is no evidence that Khamenei is planning to leave Iran. Few expect him to follow the example of Bashar al Assad, Syria's former leader — and a close ally — who escaped to Russia as his regime crumbled in December. 'He is in Iran and is not going anywhere,' the official said. 'He won't flee like the coward Assad. At a time of this foreign aggression, the nation's morale depends on his survival.' The 86-year-old leader has traditionally lived and worked out of the Leadership House complex in Tehran's District 11. But his recent video appearances suggest he has changed location. He now speaks against a brown curtain, sometimes adorned with a portrait of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of the revolution that toppled the Iranian monarchy in 1979. The setting differs markedly from the location of his usual briefings. Video analysis suggests these briefings were filmed at the IRGC's media operations centre in central Tehran — indicating that he could be living nearby, or possibly beneath the building itself. Given the recent spate of mysterious car bombings in Tehran and the death of so many colleagues, it is considered highly unlikely that Khamenei is travelling around the city by vehicle. Khamenei's precautions are understandable. Israeli intelligence has a long history of assassinations and kidnapping far beyond its shores, dating back to the abduction of Adolph Eichmann — a principal Nazi architect of the Holocaust — from Argentina in 1960. The principle of 'rise and kill first', is deeply ingrained in Mossad's culture. It is not merely a military doctrine, but one with roots in religious teachings found in the Jewish Talmud. Mossad, which rarely acknowledges its operations, has carried out assassinations in at least a dozen countries — including several in Europe — often with chilling ingenuity. In 1996, Yahya Ayyash, a Hamas bomb maker, was killed by an exploding mobile phone — a precursor of last year's detonating pagers and walkie-talkies that wounded thousands of Hezbollah operatives in Lebanon. In earlier decades, the agency is believed to have used letter bombs to kill German nuclear scientists in Egypt, poisoned a Palestinian militant leader's toothpaste in East Germany and attempted to assassinate another by spraying nerve agent into his ear in Jordan. Khamenei was reportedly deeply unnerved by the killing in 2020 of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, the country's top nuclear scientist, with a remote-controlled killer robot. Last year's assassination of Ismail Haniyeh, the political leader of Hamas, showed inventiveness of a different sort. Although the full details remain unclear, it is believed that an explosive device was hidden in his flat — possibly inside a lavatory — weeks before he arrived in the country for the inauguration of Masoud Pezeshkian, Iran's president. Credit: Mossad via Sent Defender / X Such assassinations underscore the scale of Israeli infiltration into Iran's most secure circles. No single killing is said to have shaken Khamenei more than that of Hassan Nasrallah, the Hezbollah leader, who died last year when Israel dropped 'bunker-buster' bombs on his subterranean headquarters beneath a Beirut tower block. Khamenei was reportedly perturbed not just by the loss of a trusted ally and friend, but also by the suspected source of Israel's intelligence — it is believed the information in Nasrallah's whereabouts came not from within Hezbollah but from Tehran itself. Given the extreme sensitivity of such details, the leak must have come from someone with direct access to top-level information. It is little wonder, then, that Khamenei is, in the words of Yaakov Amidror, Israel's former national security advisor, 'probably one of the most cautious people in the world.' 'He understands that he must be the next target,' Gen Amidror said. 'I am sure that he is moving from one place to another, trying to find a place where he feels comfortable.' Israel has almost certainly spent years gathering information on Khamenei's movements, using a blend of human, operational and artificial intelligence. Mossad is likely to have attempted to embed agents within his inner circle by recruiting disillusioned officials, resentful guards, or even low-level staff with access to his quarters. Signal intelligence would also be crucial. While Khamenei himself avoids electronic devices, the same cannot be said for those around him. Intercepted phone calls, emails and encrypted traffic would all be monitored by Israeli analysts. Artificial intelligence systems would then process that data to identify probable locations and track patterns in his movements. Once confirmed, a kill operation could then take many forms: a drone strike, a street-level assassination, or an air force attack. Special forces might even be deployed by helicopter, as in the 2011 raid that killed Osama bin Laden. 'How we would do it depends on the intelligence,' said Gen Amridror. 'If he's in a bunker, you use the air force. If he's in an apartment, you use a drone. If he's in a car then you use an agent in the street.' Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Yahoo
an hour ago
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Iran's options against foreign aggression include closing Strait of Hormuz, lawmaker says
DUBAI (Reuters) -Iran could shut the Strait of Hormuz as a way of hitting back against its enemies, a senior lawmaker said on Thursday, though a second member of parliament said this would only happen if Tehran's vital interests were endangered. Iran has in the past threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz to traffic in retaliation for Western pressure, and shipping sources said on Wednesday that commercial ships were avoiding Iran's waters around the strait. "Iran has numerous options to respond to its enemies and uses such options based on what the situation is," the semi-official Mehr news agency quoted Behnam Saeedi, a member of the parliament's National Security Committee presidium as saying. "Closing the Strait of Hormuz is one of the potential options for Iran," he said. Mehr later quoted another lawmaker, Ali Yazdikhah, as saying Iran would continue to allow free shipping in the Strait and in the Gulf so long as its vital national interests were not at risk. "If the United States officially and operationally enters the war in support of the Zionists (Israel), it is the legitimate right of Iran in view of pressuring the U.S. and Western countries to disrupt their oil trade's ease of transit," Yazdikhah said. President Donald Trump is keeping the world guessing about whether the United States will join Israel's bombardment of Iranian nuclear sites. Tehran has so far refrained from closing the Strait because all regional states and many other countries benefit from it, Yazdikhah added. "It is better than no country supports Israel to confront Iran. Iran's enemies know well that we have tens of ways to make the Strait of Hormuz unsafe and this option is feasible for us," the parliamentarian said. The Strait of Hormuz lies between Oman and Iran and is the primary export route for Gulf producers such as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Iraq, and Kuwait. About 20% of the world's daily oil consumption — around 18 million barrels — passes through the Strait of Hormuz, which is only about 33 km (21 miles) wide at its narrowest point.
Yahoo
an hour ago
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Iran hasn't yet made the Strait of Hormuz central in its fight with Israel. Here's how that could change.
Iranian threats to block energy shipments through the Straight of Hormuz and the fate of the nation's own oil and natural gas production efforts have been anxiously watched since the beginning of its conflict with Israel. So far, both fronts have been on the sidelines, with observers closely monitoring what changing war dynamics could signal about the ultimate economic consequences of this conflict. Oil futures have risen over 10% since the fighting started; the sense among analysts is that price pressures could ease if the war remains contained. But things could quickly go sideways — for oil markets and the global economy — if the coming weeks bring concrete signs of escalation around the Strait of Hormuz. "Should this key economic chokepoint be closed, that kind of disruption would send the price of oil toward $100 per barrel, or even above that," wrote Joe Brusuelas, the chief economist for RSM US, in a Friday note. Analysts at JPMorgan Chase have echoed these worries, calling a blocking of the Strait the "worst-case scenario" and suggesting the result could be to push inflation in the US to 5%. That's because this narrow waterway is where about 20% of the world's oil and seaborne natural gas shipments pass between oil-producing Gulf states — not just Iran, but Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, and others — and the rest of the world. Iran has only made noise so far about closing the Strait, but at least one Iranian leader has reportedly said the US military getting involved could increase the odds. Ali Yazdikhah, an Iranian lawmaker, was quoted by the country's semi-official Mehr news agency as saying, "If the United States officially and operationally enters the war ... it is the legitimate right of Iran in view of pressuring the US and Western countries to disrupt their oil trade's ease of transit." Meanwhile, President Trump offered a move toward diplomacy in recent days, saying he will decide in the next two weeks about US action but also pushing back on notions he's taking threats of force off the table. As he told reporters recently, "I may do it, I may not do it. Nobody knows what I'm going to do." Noam Raydan, who studies energy and maritime risks at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, notes that plenty of Iranian oil moves through the Hormuz passageway, so "there's no reason for Tehran at the moment to block the Strait unless it really wants to shoot itself in the foot." How that changes, she notes, is if Iran's oil infrastructure is severely damaged. "Iran will shut the Strait once it cannot export — this is my simple answer," Raydan said. But that scenario is a long way off for now, with Israel apparently focusing most of its attacks away from fossil fuel facilities. Indeed, oil disruptions in Iran have been minimal despite fears that followed one Israeli strike on an oil refinery in Tehran. This has left the world, including Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, in a sort of wait-and-see mode. "We're watching like everybody else is," the central banker told reporters this past week, though Powell suggested an easing of economic pressure is likely unless tensions in the region spike to levels not seen in nearly 50 years. What also could emerge to rattle markets — though perhaps less dramatically — are other measures Iran has at its disposal. These range from terrorist attacks to the seizing of some commercial ships. Experts note that Iran has a variety of other means to disrupt the world economy if its military situation gets more desperate. Suzanne Maloney, the director of the foreign policy program at the Brookings Institution, noted in a recent analysis that Iran could run out of existing countermeasures soon and that a further escalation may include things like small-scale terrorist attacks and cyberattacks in addition to threats to the Strait of Hormuz. But, she noted, these are options that "all entail risky tradeoffs, especially the prospect of precipitating US military intervention, which Tehran would prefer to avoid." The Washington Institute's Raydan offered another possible disruption to watch, noting that "Iran is known for seizing commercial ships in the region in retaliation to US actions ... so I'd say ship seizures are something to watch, and Iran has experience in that." Possible attacks on shipping were also brought up in a recent Capital Economics analysis that laid out the effects of four potential scenarios in the weeks ahead, ranging from a short conflict to regime change. Perhaps the most economic uncertainty could come with a scenario of "long-lasting conflict with no off-ramp," which, the group noted, could include regular attacks in the months ahead on shipping and energy transit from both Iran and its proxies. That's a scenario, they wrote, that "might result in a long-lasting higher oil price in the range of $130-$150 [per barrel], lift inflation in advanced economies by 2-2.5%-pts by end-2025 and would be a major risk-off event in markets." But the bottom line, the economists added, is that "we may not know the endgame for some time." Ben Werschkul is a Washington correspondent for Yahoo Finance. Click here for political news related to business and money policies that will shape tomorrow's stock prices Sign in to access your portfolio
