MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
In Iran, a panel of clerics is deciding who will replace Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed in recent airstrikes. His son is considered the front-runner. But whoever is named, there's little question the regime will undergo fundamental change after nearly 40 years under Khamenei's rule. NPR's international affairs correspondent Jackie Northam has this report.
JACKIE NORTHAM, BYLINE: In the last few years before his death, Ayatollah Khamenei would periodically suggest names of potential successors to the council of experts, a group of 88 clerics charged with deciding Iran's next supreme leader. They're now having to meet virtually because of the war. Earlier this week, the names included the grandson of the Islamic Republic's founding father, Ayatollah Khomeini, some hard-liners, moderates and Khamenei 's 56-year-old son, Mojtaba.
AFSHON OSTOVAR: He's kind of an unknown quantity. He's sort of a guy who you see in pictures, in meetings, that sort of thing, kind of in the background.
NORTHAM: Afshon Ostovar is an Iran specialist and the author of "Wars Of Ambition: The United States, Iran, And The Struggle For The Middle East." He says Mojtaba is considered a hard-liner who's closely associated with a violent crackdown on protesters in 2009. But Ostovar says Mojtaba has important connections, including to the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps - or IRGC.
OSTOVAR: All the candidates that were put out there, he was the one that was closest to the IRGC. He was also very well-connected in his father's own office. And to me, those are the two most important parts of the regime. And so if they support you, then you're likely to be the next leader.
NORTHAM: Ostovar says if Mojtaba Khamenei is named as Iran's new supreme leader, it will send a signal that the regime wants continuity.
OSTOVAR: But I think if Mojtaba was elected, what it says is that the regime wants to preserve as much of the status quo as possible, right? So he's a status quo candidate. And I think just about anybody that's going to be picked, if it's not him, is going to be a status quo candidate.
NORTHAM: But Ali Vaez, director of the Iran Project at the International Crisis Group, says the current system can't be sustained. Iran is weakened from war, widespread protests and a battered economy.
ALI VAEZ: The Second Republic, headed by Ayatollah Khamenei since 1989, is gone. And whatever comes next would be a transformed regime. No one would be able to restore the system's legitimacy without undergoing fundamental structural changes.
NORTHAM: It's unlikely that a new supreme leader in Iran will wield as much power as Ayatollah Khamenei, says Jonathan Panikoff, director of the Atlantic Council's Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative and a former intelligence officer.
JONATHAN PANIKOFF: The reality is the balance of power within the Iranian system has shifted over the years. As Khamenei leveraged the Guards more and more, they've gained power. They're in every part of the economy. They're in every part of, obviously, the military establishment.
NORTHAM: Panikoff says a new supreme leader will be deferential to the Revolutionary Guards.
PANIKOFF: Where we end up in a situation in which it's senior officials from the Guards fundamentally running the country. And we end up in what's closer to a military dictatorship with a fig leaf to a religious supreme leader than we do with a supreme leader like Ayatollah Khamenei, who's actually calling the shots and has the final word.
NORTHAM: Yet, when the late Ayatollah Khamenei was chosen as supreme leader, he was considered weak and pliable. But he proved to be cunning and ruthless and went on to become one of the most powerful leaders in the Middle East.
Jackie Northam, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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