How Ayatollah Ali Khamenei came to power, and who leads Iran next | Pinch Point

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Iran has a long history of coups, revolutions and invasions, leaving it with a complex web of economic, religious and military alliances. On paper, it’s meant to create a balance between theocracy and democracy. In reality, only one man is truly in control. Amid escalating tensions with the US and Israel, stalled nuclear talks and economic collapse, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is finding that some of his most hardened supporters are hungry for change. Subscribe to our channel: http://bit.ly/AJSubscribe Follow us on Twitter https://twitter.com/AJEnglish Find us on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/aljazeera Check our website: https://www.aljazeera.com/ Check out our Instagram page: https://www.instagram.com/aljazeeraenglish/ Download AJE Mobile App: https://aje.io/AJEMobile #Iran #IranProtests #IranUnrest #IranHumanRights #AyatollahAliKhamenei #MasoudPezeshkian #AntigovernmentProtests #IranPoliticalCrackdown #USIranTensions #IRGC #IslamicRevolution #PinchPoint #aljazeeraenglish Transcript: In June 2025, with US and Israeli air strikes pounding Thran, Iran's supreme leader did something he has avoided doing for years. He picked a successor. Actually, he picked three potential successors, all senior clerics. This was because the threats against his life were becoming real. Israel wanted to take him out. The US wasn't opposed to it either. And so hidden in a bunker at an undisclosed location, Ayatah Ali Kamei wrote down three names, ones that would be kept secret as long as he remained in power, as long as he remained alive. But this isn't how Iran's most senior political and religious figure is meant to be chosen. So why the secrecy? That tells us something about how power works in Iran and what Iran's powerful are truly afraid of. Iran has an elected president, but he has a limited portfolio. It has a national military, but also another parallel army that's even stronger. It has influential business leaders, but it's the religious charities that make the real money. On paper, this complicated network of economic, religious, and military alliances is meant to maintain a balance. In reality, it's led to a web of competing interests, mistrust, and corruption. We need to talk about Iran's revolution, but not the one you're probably thinking of. Not the one in 1979, the one that happened seven decades earlier, the constitutional revolution. In 1905, three groups came together to demand change and representation. They were the clerics, merchants, and secular reformists. The clerics represented Iran's communities in rural provinces and their traditional ties to Islam. The reformists wanted to modernize Iran and create a democratic state in line with liberal Europe. and the merchants or the bizaar represented the growing middle class, the business interests that weaved the country together. Historically, power in Iran was decentralized. Each region had its own internal politics, its own leaders, and made its own decisions. It's why religious clerics hold so much influence. If you had a problem, you went to your local mosque and spoke to the imam. This is what historian Mehan Kamraa calls a strong society with a weak state. history of modern Iran, like the history of many other um countries, um is made up of this almost constant struggle between state and society, between people in position of institutions and instruments of power trying to force their ideology, their agenda, their policies on a society that beats to its own rhythm. uh sometimes is receptive to these pressures from above and sometimes um either is um oblivious and doesn't want to have anything to do with it and sometimes outright resents it. And so this state society tension is one of the defining factors, in fact the defining factor. While this lack of a strong centralized states meant each region could be left to govern its own affairs, it left Iran at the mercy of foreign powers. They saw Iran as the bridge between east and west, fertile, resourcerich, and located conveniently along both ancient and modern supply routes. In other words, prime real estate. Throughout much of the 19th and 20th centuries, Russia and Britain often controlled different parts of Iran at once, trying to edge each other out through competing political and business deals with Iran's leaders. When they weren't helping one ruler stay in power, they were overthrowing another who wasn't playing ball. But Iran's society was changing, becoming more urbanized. Young people moved to the cities to seek education and career prospects. There, the three sectors of Iran society began to work with each other to imagine the type of state that could protect them from predatory colonial forces. A modern state that represented all its sectors, but one that would impose limits on absolute power. Together, they wrote a constitution and established an elected parliament or majus.