The Ayatollah's survival was no accident — it was Israel's choice, and a wise one

The Hill

13-06-2025

Israel just executed the most far-reaching decapitation strike in the history of Iran. Within hours, targeted airstrikes had eliminated Iran's top military planners — General Mohammad Bagheri, General Amir Ali Hajizadeh, and General Ali Rashid. Simultaneously, missile development facilities and key military coordination nodes were targeted, severing some of Iran's communication links with proxy networks in Syria and Iraq.
And yet the man at the apex of the system, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was not targeted. To some observers, this omission may seem inexplicable. But martyring Khamenei would have produced explosive consequences far beyond the battlefield.
Under Iran's constitution, the death of the Supreme Leader triggers an emergency succession process managed by the Assembly of Experts. Since the March 2024 elections, this body has been dominated by clerics aligned with the hardline factions.
Their candidate would likely be Mojtaba Khamenei, the Supreme Leader's son and behind-the-scenes enforcer. But Mojtaba faces a problem: He lacks the religious credentials necessary for the role. He has never issued a formal legal opinion, never taught in the traditional seminaries of Qom or Najaf and has never been accepted as a senior clerical authority.
In Shi'a Islam, legitimacy must be earned through decades of scholarship and peer recognition — it is not inherited as with a monarchy.
Had Israel killed Khamenei, this would likely have fast-tracked and legitimized Mojtaba's rise. Absent that, it would be very controversial. Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani in Iraq, for example, has long rejected Iran's system of having a cleric as a political ruler. As long as the Ayatollah lives to a ripe old age, Mojtaba is both too illegitimate to unify the system and too protected to be sidelined. Thus, he may stall Iran's succession process into a doctrinal stalemate — one that Israel has now made more likely by weakening his military protectors while leaving his father alive.
Shi'a political theology is structured around martyrdom. The Seventh Century deaths of Ali and Hussein form the religious foundation of resistance and sacrifice.
Had Khamenei been killed by an Israeli missile, it would not have been processed politically but mythologically. His death would have been viewed as a reenactment of the Karbala tragedy. That would have sanctified his son, unified Iran's factions, and legitimized violent escalation from Iran's regional proxies.
These groups — Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, and Kata'ib Hezbollah in Iraq — see themselves as guardians of the Supreme Leader's religious authority. Iranian defectors have long hinted at internal escalation plans that treat the assassination of the Supreme Leader as a trigger for full-spectrum retaliation: coordinated missile barrages, cyberattacks on Gulf energy terminals, and asymmetric operations against U.S. targets in the region. Sparing Khamenei denies Iran that trigger.
It also preserves strategic ambiguity. By targeting Iran's ability to act but not its spiritual figurehead, Israel prevents the regime from invoking an existential crisis. The message to Iran's mid-level commanders and bureaucrats is clear: Escalation is not inevitable. There is still room for recalibration.
Khamenei's regime has never relied solely on brute force. At the center of this is the Office for the Preservation and Publication of the Works of the Supreme Leader. While nominally a clerical publishing organ, the office functions in reality as a doctrinal surveillance and enforcement bureau. Under the informal leadership of Mojtaba Khamenei, it regulates clerical discourse, curates access to the Supreme Leader, disciplines heterodox scholars, and manages a patronage economy for the seminaries.
This system operates under the protection of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps senior command. The generals eliminated were the regime's enforcers of doctrinal compliance. Their presence deterred rebellion, reinforced Mojtaba's authority, and insulated the clerical apparatus from challenge. The strike helps to break this protective outer layer, leaving the regime's ideological core exposed and overextended.
Israel should keep targeting the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps command. But it should not eliminate Mojtaba or high-profile hardliner clerics. That would risk martyrdom and consolidation. Instead, it should be to disrupt the infrastructure that sustains Mojtaba's influence. This includes severing the financial lifelines that fund loyalist seminaries, exposing internal contradictions within Qom's clerical elite, and quietly empowering transnational rivals — especially those aligned with Sistani in Najaf, who reject clerical political rule altogether. The goal should not be to decapitate the regime, but to delay, fragment, and deny.
For the first time in decades, the Iranian religious establishment faces the threat of a vacuum of coercive insulation. In this new context, figures who once maintained quiet distance from the state may now emerge as active challengers to Mojtaba's succession, potentially leading to a schism that would dramatically affect the operations of pro-Iranian militias across the region. Their legitimacy not just to Tehran's treasury but also to the symbolic authority of the Supreme Leader.
If that authority is contested — if Mojtaba is promoted without consensus — then these groups may begin aligning with other clerics or factions. Figures such as Qais Khazali or Hashem Safieddine, who combine militia leadership with religious aspirations, could become new centers of gravity. The result would be the transformation of the Axis of Resistance from a coordinated deterrent bloc into a constellation of semi-autonomous and potentially competing actors.
In wars of theology, as in wars of missiles, the decisive blow is not the one that kills a man. It is the one that denies a myth.
Carlo J.V. Caro is a New York-based writer who studied and lived in both Jordan and Israel.