Sheltering in a bunker, Iran's supreme leader prepares for the worst

Business Standard

23-06-2025

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has picked replacements in case military commanders die in Israeli strikes. He has also named possible replacements for himself
NYT
Farnaz Fassihi
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 military 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.
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 appeared 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.
But then the United States entered the war as well. President Trump announced late Saturday that the U.S. military had bombed three of Iran's nuclear sites, including its uranium-enrichment facility deep underground at Fordo, broadening the conflict significantly.
'Our objective was the destruction of Iran's nuclear enrichment capacity and a stop to the nuclear threat posed by the world's No. 1 state sponsor of terror,' Mr. Trump said in an address to the nation from the White House on Saturday night.
Peering inside Iran's closely guarded leadership can be difficult, but as of late this week its chain of command still seemed to be functioning, despite being hit hard, and there were no obvious signs of dissent in the political ranks, according to the officials and to diplomats in Iran.
Ayatollah Khamenei, 86, is aware that either Israel or the United States could try to assassinate him, an end he would view as martyrdom, the officials said. Given the possibility, the ayatollah has made the unusual decision to instruct his nation's Assembly of Experts, the clerical body responsible for appointing the supreme leader, to choose his successor swiftly from the three names he has provided.
Normally, the process of appointing a new supreme leader could take months, with clerics picking and choosing from their own lists of names. But with the nation now at war, the officials said, the ayatollah wants to ensure a quick, orderly transition and to preserve his legacy.
'The top priority is the preservation of the state,' said Vali Nasr, an Iran expert and professor of international affairs at Johns Hopkins University. 'It is all calculative and pragmatic.'
Succession has long been an exceedingly delicate and thorny topic, seldom discussed publicly beyond speculations and rumors in political and religious circles. The supreme leader has enormous powers: He is the commander in chief of the Iran Armed Forces, as well as the head of the judiciary, the legislature and the executive branch. He is also a Vali Faqih, meaning the most senior guardian of the Shiite faith.
Ayatollah Khamenei's son Mojtaba, also a cleric and close to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, who was rumored to be a front-runner, is not among the candidates, the officials said. Iran's former conservative president, Ibrahim Raisi, was also considered a front-runner before he was killed in a helicopter crash in 2024.
Since the war started, Ayatollah Khamenei has delivered to the public two recorded video messages, against a backdrop of brown curtains and next to the Iranian flag. 'The people of Iran will stand against a forced war,' he said, vowing not to surrender.
In normal times, Ayatollah Khamenei lives and works in a highly secure compound in central Tehran called the 'beit rahbari' — or leader's house — and he seldom leaves the premises, except for special occasions like delivering a sermon. Senior officials and military commanders come to him for weekly meetings, and speeches for the public are staged from the compound.
His retreat to a bunker shows how furiously Tehran has been struck in a war with Israel that Iranian officials say is unfolding on two fronts.
One is being waged from the air, with Israeli airstrikes on military bases, nuclear facilities, critical energy infrastructure, commanders and nuclear scientists in their apartment buildings in tightly packed residential neighborhoods. Some of Iran's top commanders were summarily wiped out.
Hundreds of people have also been killed and thousands of others injured, with civilians slain across Iran, human rights groups inside and outside the country say.
But Iranian officials say that they are fighting on a second front, as well, with covert Israeli operatives and collaborators scattered on the ground across Iran's vast terrain, launching drones at critical energy and military structures. The fear of Israeli infiltration among the top ranks of Iran's security and intelligence apparatus has rattled the Iranian power structure, even Ayatollah Khamenei, officials say.
'It is clear that we had a massive security and intelligence breach; there is no denying this,' said Mahdi Mohammadi, a senior adviser to Iran's speaker of Parliament, Gen. Mohammad Ghalibaf, in an audio recording analyzing the war. 'Our senior commanders were all assassinated within one hour.'
Iran's 'biggest failure was not discovering' the months of planning Israeli operatives had conducted to bring missiles and drone parts into the country to prepare for the attack, he added.
The country's leadership has been preoccupied with three central concerns, officials say: an assassination attempt against Ayatollah Khamenei; the United States' entering the war; and more debilitating attacks against Iran's critical infrastructure, like power plants, oil and gas refineries and dams.
Iran has threatened to retaliate against the United States by attacking American targets in the region, but the options for Iran's government are complicated, at best. If it retaliates against the American strikes on its nuclear facilities, it could be thrust into a major war with a military superpower.
The fear of assassination and infiltration within Iran's ranks is also widespread enough that the Ministry of Intelligence has announced a series of security protocols, telling officials to stop using cellphones or any electronic devices to communicate. It has ordered all senior government officials and military commanders to remain below ground, according to two Iranian officials.
Almost every day, the Ministry of Intelligence or the Armed Forces issue directives for the public to report suspicious individuals and vehicle movements, and to refrain from taking photographs and videos of attacks on sensitive sites.
The country has also been in a communication blackout with the outside world. The internet has been nearly shut down, and incoming international calls have been blocked. The Ministry of Telecommunications said in a statement that these measures were to find enemy operatives on the ground and to disable their ability to launch attacks.
'The security apparatus has concluded that, in this critical time, the internet is being abused to harm the lives and livelihoods of civilians,' said Ali Ahmadinia, the communications director for President Masoud Pezeshkian. 'We are safeguarding the security of our country by shutting down the internet.'
On Friday, the Supreme National Security Council took it a step further, announcing that anyone working with the enemy must turn themselves into the authorities by the end of the day on Sunday, hand over their military equipment and 'return to the arms of the people.' It warned that anyone discovered to be working with the enemy after Sunday would face execution.
Tehran has largely emptied out after orders by Israel to evacuate several highly populated districts. Videos of the city show highways and desolate streets that are typically clogged with bumper-to-bumper traffic. In interviews, residents of Tehran who remained in the city said security forces had set up checkpoints on every highway, on smaller roads and at entry points in and out of the city to conduct ad hoc searches.
Mohammad Ali Abtahi, a reformist politician and a former vice president, said in a telephone interview from Tehran that Israel had miscalculated Iranians' reaction to the war. Mr. Abtahi said that the deep political factions that are typically in sharp disagreement with one another had rallied behind the supreme leader and focused the country on defending itself from an external threat.
The war has 'softened the divisions we had, both among each other and with the general public,' Mr. Abtahi said.
Israel's attacks have set off a resurgence of nationalism among many Iranians, inside and outside the country, including many critical of the government. That sense of common cause has emerged in a torrent of social media posts and statements by prominent human rights and political activists, physicians, national athletes, artists and celebrities. 'Like family, we may not always agree but Iran's soil is our red line,' wrote Saeid Ezzatollahi, a player with Iran's national soccer squad, Team Melli, on social media.
Hotels, guesthouses and wedding halls have opened their doors free of charge to shelter displaced people fleeing Tehran, according to Iranian news media and videos on social media. Psychologists are offering free virtual therapy sessions in posts on their social media pages. Supermarkets are giving discounts, and at bakeries, customers are limiting their own purchases of fresh bread to one loaf so that everyone standing in line can have bread, according to videos shared on social media. Volunteers are offering services, like running errands to checking on disabled and older residents.
'We are seeing a beautiful unity among our people,' said Reza, 42, a businessman, in a telephone interview near the Caspian Sea, where he is taking shelter with his family. Using only one name to avoid scrutiny by the government, he added: 'It's hard to explain the mood. We are scared, but we are also giving each other solidarity, love and kindness. We are in it together. This is an attack on our country, on Iran.'
Narges Mohammadi, a Nobel Peace Prize winner and the country's most prominent human rights activist, has spent decades in and out of jail, pushing for democratic change in Iran. But even she warned against the attacks on her country, telling the BBC this past week that 'Democracy cannot come through violence and war.'