Behrouz Turani 

Iran International: 

The once-hushed conversation about who will succeed Iran’s 86-year-old Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has not only spilled into the open, but has curdled into public intimidation of contender and former president Hassan Rouhani.

Rouhani has become the focal point of a succession debate that appears to be increasingly unavoidable after a June war with Israel and the United States which the theocrat largely watched from hiding.

The dovish former president invoked hardliners' ire with a call after the conflict to open up the country's politics and rein in Tehran's confrontational foreign policy.

Reading like implicit criticism of Khamenei’s military and governance record, his plea was decried as weakness and treason by detractors determined to shape the post-Khamenei future.

The most striking came from Babak Zanjani, the billionaire tycoon whose 2016 death sentence for embezzling $2.8 billion in oil funds was quietly commuted before his conditional release this year.

On 2 December, Zanjani posted a message on X that did not name Rouhani but included an image of the moderate cleric along with a headline that floated the former president as Iran’s next leader.

“They will carry this wish to the grave,” Zanjani wrote. “Iran will be cleansed of incompetence and unqualified managers. Iran needs young, educated, and capable people, not holders of fake and baseless degrees.

The swipe at Rouhani’s disputed academic credentials—and the suggestion that his aspirations should be taken to the grave—was difficult to mistake even without the image he had quoted.

Avoidable no more

It was not the first such threat against the moderates’ foremost figure. Hardline MP Kamran Ghazanfari recently argued that Rouhani should be tried and executed if accusations of treason “prove true.”

Rouhani championed the 2016 international nuclear deal from which US President Donald Trump later withdrew but has a deep background as a security and political apparatchik of the Islamic Republic with broad support among insiders.

Zanjani’s intervention stands out among the criticism: a convicted billionaire, pardoned by Khamenei, now declaiming on the succession—a sign, perhaps, of a system losing its old constraints because the stakes have changed.

Tehran’s sharpened confrontation with Israel has revived speculation that the 86-year-old cleric could become a target. War and economic crisis, coupled with the unavoidable fact of age, have created unusual license.

Zanjani, indebted to and no doubt confident in the powers of those who secured his release, speaks with a confidence unthinkable even a year ago, treating Khamenei’s departure as inevitable and focusing solely on blocking Rouhani.

Until the US and Israeli strikes on Iran in June 2025, few dared to broach succession without the ritual “God forbid.”

Even reformist academic Sadeq Zibakalam has prefaced remarks on the succession with the formulaic blessing—“after Khamenei lives for 120 years”—before saying plainly that Rouhani considers himself better suited for leadership than any other contender, including Khamenei’s son Mojtaba.

It’s just the beginning

For Khamenei, less visible after the war and perhaps aware of the system’s erosion, such discussions are perilous.

Openly grooming Mojtaba risks signaling vulnerability; suppressing the conversation only highlights how exposed the system has become when its future rests on a single, ageing figure.

Without a designated heir—even informally—the system remains brittle, its future hostage to uncertainty and factional strife.

At a moment when external adversaries may be girding for further war, living standards are collapsing and public anger is close to boiling point, stepping forward as a potential leader requires nerve, discipline and broad support.

Few, if any, among Iran’s political elite possess all three.

The result is a succession struggle waged through innuendo: a contest as bitter and murky as any yet seen in Tehran, which may last until Khamenei is no more, if not longer.