Special to WorldTribune.com

By Yossef Bodansky, Senior Editor, Global Information System / Defense & Foreign Affairs

There are new reports of a sharp deterioration in the health of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Hoseini Khamenei [denied as propaganda by the regime].

On March 4, he was reportedly hospitalized in critical condition and has undergone emergency surgery according to sources.

Significantly, the Iranian sources did not mention the success of the operation.

French medical experts were called to Tehran. They reported that Khamenei’s prostate cancer had spread beyond control. On the basis of medical reports, French Intelligence now estimates that the time remaining for Khamenei ranged between imminent death to no more than two years’ life expectancy.

This is not the first time that Khamenei’s health deteriorated and his death was anticipated. He is 76 years old and was never known to be in good health.

On Sept. 8, 2014, he underwent prostate surgery which reportedly succeeded. Khamenei’s hospitalization was covered by the Iranian media with emphasis that the issue of succession was not on the table. This time, however, Ayatollah Khamenei was rushed to hospital in great secrecy. Moreover, Iranian leaders and aspirant leaders were exploiting the crisis in order to seriously consider succession.

Moreover, the succession crisis was taking place at a crucial time when geostrategic and geo-economic developments in the greater Middle East, Central and South Asia have provided Iran with great opportunities as well as major threats. Furthermore, the markedly intensifying initiative by U.S. President Barack Obama to reach a “grand rapprochement” with the U.S. have provided Tehran with a unique opportunity to consolidate its posture as regional power to the point that other regional powers — mainly Israel — would find it difficult to reverse Iran’s ascent even after Obama left office in early 2017.

Irrespective of when it would be completed, Iran’s unfolding succession process is uniquely important.

Essentially, the selection of Iran’s next supreme leader would mean a generational handover of power from the mullahs who exploited the fall of the Shah in 1979, and founded the Islamic Republic, to the ascent of the non-clerics who rose to prominence during the Iran-Iraq War.

Former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was the first of these non-clerics to rise almost to the top (2005-2013), and his recent attempts at a political comeback should be perceived in this context.

Indeed, power in Khamenei’s Tehran has increasingly shifted to security leaders: mainly the tight cadres at the very top of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC: Pasdaran). They are already projecting immense political power at the expense of the traditional clerical cadres.

The person most responsible for this development is Khamenei’s 45-year-old son, Mujtaba Hosseini Khamenei.

As his father’s closest political confidant and executor of sensitive tasks, Mujtaba already has immense political clout in Tehran’s innermost corridors of power. He is also effectively in charge of the paramilitary Basij forces: the “Praetorian Guards” of the clerical Administration.

In the Summer of 2009, Mujtaba directly oversaw the Basij’s violent crackdown of the post-elections demonstrations.

Because of his accumulation of power and influence, many observers in Tehran have opined that Mujtaba was “being groomed” to succeed his father as supreme leader. But this is not likely because all Iranian leaders fear the creation of a dynasty. For the same reason, founding leader “Ayatollah” Ruhollah Khomeini’s children were also sidelined after his death. Hence, Mujtaba Khamenei was likely to emerge as Tehran’s preeminent kingmaker.

The escalating Iranian involvement in the civil wars in Iraq, and particularly the alliance between the Iranian viceroy Gen. Qassem Soleimani and Iraqi Shi’ite leader Moqtada Sadr in order to better control and use the traditional Shi’ite militias gravitating around Sadr, complicates the succession process in Tehran.

The Tehran old guard, led by the immensely powerful Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, has long impressed upon the Khamenei father and son that it was imperative for the next supreme leader to be a mullah even if other power holders are non-clerics.

Until recently, the compromise candidate for near term supreme leader was Grand Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi.

Shahroudi was born in Autumn 1948 in Najaf, Iraq. Between the mid-1980s and mid-1990s, Shahroudi was a prominent leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), which was then based in Iran. As SCIRI’s leader, Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim was involved with Iranian Intelligence efforts to subvert the Gulf States then supporting Saddam Hussein’s Iraq (because the Hakim family originally hailed from Bahrain and the eastern Arabian Peninsula). Thus Shahroudi maintained a high profile concerning Iraq’s Shi’ites.

Consequently, top Iranian clerics objected to Khamenei’s decision in the late-1990s to nominate Shahroudi as Iran’s supreme justice. Khamenei prevailed and Shahroudi served as the Head of Iran’s Judiciary from 1999 until 2009. In July 2011, he was appointed by Khamenei to head the arbitration body established to resolve the dispute between Ahmadinejad and the Majlis.

Presently, Shahroudi is a senior member of Iran’s Guardian Council from whose ranks the next Supreme Leader would be elected.

By age, political loyalty to Khamenei, and theological prominence, Shahroudi is immensely qualified. However, there is no way that Sadr and the Iraqi Shi’ite militant leaders would tolerate the rise of a SCIRI figure — even if Iranian — after they’ve fought so hard to defeat the al-Hakim family and destroy SCIRI in Iraq. Fighting mightily to sustain a Shi’ite Iraq and the Shi’ite Crescent going through Iraq to the Mediterranean, Soleimani is not likely to take the risk of alienating the Sadr camp at this point.

The key test of Shahroudi’s relevance will take place on March 15. The Council of Experts was to meet on whether to select Shahroudi as the interim chairman for a year (replacing the chairman, Ayatollah Reza Mahdavi-Kani, who had died on Aug.  21, 2015), until the end of the Council’s current eight-year term. In 2016, members of the Council were to choose a new chairman from among the members. If Shahroudi was elected, both on March 15, 2015, and again in 2016, he would top the list of Khamenei’s likely successors. Ultimately, a lot would depend whether Khamenei was alive by mid-March 2015, and capable of one more time throwing his weight behind one of his closest protégés.

Meanwhile, the IRGC leadership was increasingly looking at Ayatollah Sadeq Ardeshir Amoli Larijani, 54, as their favorite candidate. He is the youngest of the three Larijani brothers who jointly wield immense political power in Tehran in both judicial and security circles. Sadeq Larijani is the current Head of Iran’s Judiciary, having succeeded Shahroudi in 2009. He also served as one of the 12 members of the Guardian Council of the Islamic Republic of Iran for eight years.

Most important is brother Ali Ardashir Amoli Larijani, 56, the Speaker of the Parliament of Iran since May 2008. Ali Larijani was the Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council between August 2005 and October 2007. He resigned in order to take over Parliament (Majlis) on behalf of Khamenei. Ali Larijani is still one of the two representatives of Khamenei to the Council. In this capacity, Larijani effectively functions as Iran’s top negotiator on issues of national security, including Iran’s nuclear program.

The third and oldest brother, Mohammad Javad Ardashir Larijani, 63, is also politically most powerful if less famous. Officially, he is the head of the Human Rights Council in the Judiciary. Mohammad Larijani is a top adviser and counselor to Khamenei. He was a member of Parliament between 2000 and 2008, and vacated his seat at Khamenei’s request in order to permit the entry of brother Ali Larijani.

Irrespective of who is going to succeed Khamenei and when handover of power is going to take place, all Iranian leaders will soon have to confront two key issues over which they have no control but cannot ignore. These issues add to the sense of urgency prevailing in Tehran.

As columnist David Goldman has warned in numerous articles in Asia Times Online, Iran’s bellicosity has been rising because of demographic-economic factors beyond Tehran’s control.

“Iran is on a course to demographic disaster, and must assert its hegemony while it still has time,” Goldman warned. “Iran’s fertility decline from about seven children per female in 1979 to just 1.6 in 2012 remains a conundrum to demographers.”

The Iranian birthrate decline is the aggregate outcome of epidemic levels of sexually-transmitted disease (STD) and inbreeding among the very top clerics (to ensure proper spouses) and the very poor workers, farmers, and soldiers/policemen (whose families cannot afford to marry outside the family).

The Iranian Government now admits to the lifetime infertility of 22 to 25 percent of couples. For the first time, official Tehran is cognizant.

Ahmadinejad accused Iranian women of committing “genocide” by refusing to have numerous children. However, unlike Sunni Muslim countries, non-marital sexual relations are on the rise in Iran because of the growing popularity of sigha [temporary marriage] so that the pressure to marry in order to have sex is declining.

Meanwhile, Ahmadinejad’s “War on Oil” strategy of a decade ago has been losing effectiveness as the industrialized world has shifting focus away from Persian Gulf and Central Asian oil reserves.

Over the next decade, the People’s Republic of China’s dependence on Middle East oil was expected to increase and then begin to decline. Moreover, according to Tehran’s estimates, Iran’s own oil exports would soon fall sharply and might even reach zero by 2020 because of growing domestic consumption and lack of development. This would leave Tehran with the only options to either expedite its ascent to regional pre-eminence for as long as the “War on Oil” strategy could still deter customers (friends and foes alike), or make the nuclear threat more explicit in order to deter foreign powers against intervening and coerce them into recognizing Iran’s ascent.

To date, Tehran has been trying to avoid elevating Iran’s nuclear profile for political reasons vis-à-vis the U.S. and the West. Hence, Tehran has the incentive to strike out quickly, before the “War on Oil” threat diminishes.

Therefore, Tehran must move fast and consolidate quickly.

Iran is committed to retaining its Shi’ite Crescent to the shores of the Mediterranean, to dominating “Eastern Arabia” in order to control the region’s hydrocarbons reserves and to stifle Saudi Arabia, to control the region’s maritime choke points (mainly the Strait of Hormuz, Bab al-Mandeb, and the southern access to Suez Canal), and to surge into Central and South Asia as well as western Africa in order to expand Iran’s geostrategic and geoeconomic outreach.

The anticipated death or incapacitation of Supreme Leader Khamenei only increases the pressure on the mullahs’ inner-circle and aspirant leaders to escalate the ascent and increase the bellicosity of Iran in order to demonstrate their fealty to Khamenei and reinforce their claim to greater power in the succession process.

  Rise of Iran’s warrior class: Succession in the air with reports of Khamenei’s decline, WorldTribune.com