A colossus with clay feet. From the upper part of its supreme function of a revolution guide, Ayatolá Ali Khamenei has directed Iran with an iron fist for 36 years. But his reign and his life seem more threatened than ever. A threat that comes directly from his jury enemy, Israel.
During the last five days, the Hebrew and Tehran state have been exchanging mortal missile fire. Iran has swore to bomb Israel tirelessly to end the attack of an unprecedented magnitude launched on June 13. The objective shown by the Israelis: to prevent I will have the atomic bomb, as the western ones suspect.
Hundreds of military and nuclear objectives have been attacked, several leaders of the guards of the revolution were killed, including the highest officers of the country, and Israel does not seem to want to stop there. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants to reach the Mullahs regime in the heart killing the figure of Iran, the Supreme Guide, Ali Khamenei.
Ali Khamenei, the “Keystone” of the Iranian diet
Questioned by the American television channel ABC about a future murder of the despot that describes as “modern Hitler”, Israeli prime minister replied that his country would do “what he has to do.” For Benjamin Netanyahu, killing Ayatollah Ali Khamenei will not “lead to an escalation of the conflict” but “the conflict will end.”
His defense minister, Israel Katz, threatened Ali Khamenei to undergo a “destination similar to Saddam Hussein”, an Iraqi leader executed in 2006 after his capture by US forces.
“Remember what happened to the dictator of the neighboring country of Iran who took the same path against Israel,” he said.
“Ali Khamenei seems to be the final objective of Israel because it constitutes” the cornerstone “of the Iranian regime, Image David Rigoulet -rez, associate researcher of the Institute of International and Strategic Relations (IRIS) and specialist in the Middle East contacted by BFMTV.com.
“It is a bit like a card castle, if the central part is eliminated, everything can collapse,” abounds.
And for the specialist, Benjamin Netanyahu has the fall of the Iranian regime an “almost personal” objective. “For Israel, it would be the epilogue of a long existential fight. The Israeli would finally have resolved their story with Iran,” said David Rigoulet -rez, who recalls that the “Islamic Republic has in its initial DNA in 1979 the destruction of the state of Israel.”
If the US opposition has such a privileged plan, Donald Trump still raised his tone on Tuesday. The president of the United States declared in his social social network that he did not tell “to eliminate (kill!)” The supreme guide “for the moment” and demanded an “unconditional capitulation” of Iran.
“Donald Trump may consider that he still needs an interlocutor to negotiate a way out of the war in progress,” said Iris associate researcher.
A man with full powers
This Monday, one of the residences of the Supreme Guide in Tehran was attacked by the Israelis. “But they knew he was not there, they wanted to show that they can point to him, kill him. This is a message that is sent to scare him,” explains Lci Michel Fayad, political and geopolitical analyst.
According to our colleagues from DutyAli Khamenei and his family hid in a bunker in Lavizan, a district northeast of Tehran. The United States “knows exactly where the so -called Supreme Guide” Iranian, “said Donald Trump on his social social platform.
If it is the first time that it has been subject to direct threat, Ali Khamenei knows that a consequence of his adhesion to the highest stratum of power in 1989 is a sword of Damocles on his head. Since he reached the Iranian Supreme Function, Ayatollah has never left Iran. His last visit to the foreigner dates back to 1989, in North Korea, when he was still president. His trips are secret and extremely safe.
The 86 -year -old man happened to Ayatollah Rouhollah Khomeini becoming the second supreme guide in the country since the establishment of the Islamic Republic in 1979 after the revolution that the Chah of Iran fell.
In this place, it has all the powers. It determines the main orientations of the country, appoint the senior military officials, has under its authority the ideological army of the guards of the revolution, but also justice. He has the president under his thumb, his second, which he can rule out.
Ali Khamenei, born in 1939 in the sacred city of Mechhed in the Northeast of Iran, where religious studies followed, has been established as a deeply anti-western and anti-Israeli figure. In 2009, he described the Hebrew state as “cancer tumor.” And in the past he said that the United States was “the number one enemy” of Iran.
The youngest of a modest religious family, committed in the 1960s against Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, the last chah of Iran forced to exile by the Iranian revolution, gradually gravi the staircase. Among other things, he was appointed Vice President of Defense in 1979, a member of the Islamic Advisory Assembly, general secretary of the Islamic Republic or member of the Assembly of Experts who elected the Supreme Guide before being elected President of the Islamic Republic of Iran in 1981.
This became the first ayatollah to occupy this position with limited powers. He remained president for eight years, two periods. A few months before his choice, Ali Khamenei had to face an attempt at murder. A pump placed in a recorder made him lose the use of his right arm, since he got up in a sling.
A despot hated for a large part of its population
If he is threatened outside in an unprecedented way, Ali Khamenei has seen from inside his power hesitation several times. A large part of the Iranian population Honni, especially young people, women against whom a fierce repression is carried out, as well as the middle class.
In 2009, millions of people paraded on the street denouncing a FAER of the presidential elections for current power. The helicopters were ready to evacuate Ayatollah Ali Khamenei outside the country, reminds our colleagues in Figaro.
But it was especially in 2022 that the Iranian population increased. The monstrous manifestations, repressed in the blood, exploded after the death of the young Mahsa Amini, killed by a badly worn veil.
But so far, Ali Khamenei has never given way. The opposition is blocked. Since 2022, the death penalty has been used to reduce the population to silence and keep their hand over power. At least 975 people were executed in 2024.
Executions that hide the growing vulnerability of Ali Khamenei. Ayatollah has lost many allies: Bashar Al-Assad’s regime in Syria has been overthrown, Hezbollah’s head, a Lebanese Shiite militia created by Iran-Hassan Nasrallah, an Israeli strike in September 2024.
Iranian president ultra conservative, Ebrahim Raïssi, who was expected to become the next supreme guide died in a helicopter accident with vague circumstances, in March 2024. For some, his son, Mojtaba Khamenei, which is seen as a potential successor.
“However, the population hates him and has less religious qualifications than his father, not even being Ayatolá,” says David Rigoulet-Rze. “This succession raises an insoluble question for Ali Khamenei, to the extent that the principle of the regime is potentially questioned with an intrinsically weakened diet.”
“The door opens to uncontrollable events”
A fragility that a certain part of the Iranian population would like to explode to overthrow the regime. Some voices are asking for the uprising again.
“The Islamic Republic has ended and is collapsing. (…) It is time to get up, it is time to recover the control of Iran,” said Prince Reza Pahlavi, exiled to the United States and children of Iran, in X.
In a column published in the columns of the world, the winners of the Nobel Peace Prize Narges Mohammadi and Shirin Ebadi, and the filmmakers Jafar Panahi and Mohammad Rasoulf called “the resignation of current officials … and the opening of a peaceful transition process towards a true democracy.” To achieve its aims, Israeli prime minister invites the Iranian people themselves to rise.
“The death or fall of Ali Khamenei could generate a seismic shock wave,” explains David Rigoulet -rez. “There is no constituted and structured opposition that is probably responsible for guaranteeing an organized transition to avoid a situation of chaos,” he says. The United States is currently having the foot on the brake, because rightly fears the “after.”
“Therefore, it is a very risky bet, it could be the open door to uncontrollable events,” he judges the specialist of the Middle East. “A new sequence is being written in the history of the region, with unsuspected consequences,” he concludes.
Source: BFM TV
