Khamenei – What do to with Him?

The Hawkish Case for Keeping Him Alive

There has been much talk on what to do with Iran’s 86 year old “supreme leader” Ali Hosseini Khamenei. There are reports that he is not on Isreal’s hit list and other reports that he is but that Trump has vetoed it. On the one hand he is the recognized religious authority of Iran’s Shiites (or at least their most fanatical ones) and on the other hand he is a political leader in all senses of the word. He appoints the heads of the Revolutionary Guards and approves all senior political and military appointees. On the one hand he is symbolic and on the other hand he is an active leader, much as Nasrallah was.

There are many differences between Khamenei and Nasrallah. Nasrallah was a political leader who morphed into a religious one and Khamenei was the opposite. Nasrallah was the one who forged strategy and tactics and had personal control over all that Hezbollah did. He was a hands-on manager whose departure itself was an asset to his enemies. Also, he was not the leader of the country but the leader of the strongest political group in the country. The only risk in killing Nasrallah was that the Lebanese would vent their anger against Israel and its allies. However, that proved not to be the case since he was not popular outside of Hezbollah circles.

I don’t think that there is much of a risk of Iranians revolting and all the sudden supporting the Islamic Republic they now despise because Israel targeted the Supreme Leader. There is another, more dangerous risk though in taking him out and that is that the West, maybe including the United States, will then look at the next leader, whomever he may be, as more “moderate” as someone we can talk to and use that as an excuse to return to the negotiating table and stop Israel’s offensive and to provide this newfound “moderate” with concessions he can show the “hardliners”.

This happens time and again. The new dictator is always thought of as more moderate by the appeasers. When Brezhnev died his successor Yuri Andropov was targeted by the west as a Jazz loving neo-westerner. We can deal with someone who likes Jazz. Then came Chernenko who also was determined by the west to be a moderate. That Andropov was a longtime head of the KGB and Chernenko a long time Brezhnev ally was irrelevant. The same thing happened when Arafat died – the “moderate” Abu Mazen took over but there was no concession good enough for him to accept. For the West the new dictator is always an opportunity to appease your enemy. Whoever would be Khamenei’s replacement, no matter his pronouncements on the various Satans that Iran faces, will be an opportunity for the appeasers to force an end of the fighting on terms favorable to the Islamic Republic.

No one is calling Ali Hosseini Khamenei a moderate but whomever his replacement is, will no doubt be called “pragmatic” or “someone we can work with”. Khamenei alive is now an asset for Israel and is a necessary ingredient in Israel’s victory which will hopefully lead to the downfall of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Only then, when the Iranian state no longer puts the destruction of Israel, genocide of Jews and downfall of the West as its raison d’etre, can there be a leader who is “someone we can work with”.

For the good of victory, keep Khamenei alive.