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At around midday, even as airstrikes hit several parts of the capital, large crowds gathered in Tehran’s famous Enghelab Square to chant their allegiance to Iran’s new supreme leader.
Carrying banners showing the face of the country’s slain leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, people on Monday held a new portrait – that of his son and successor, Mojtaba Khamenei.
Other similar scenes on state media showed pledges of loyalty from several cities across the country, with people chanting, “Death to America” and “Death to Israel”, as security forces looked on.
The images stood in stark contrast to those from nine days earlier, when Iranians were seen thronging the streets to celebrate the assassination in joint US-Israeli strike of Ali Khamenei. Many inside the country blame the late cleric for three decades of repression, including the killings of thousands of protesters in bloody state crackdowns on anti-government protests.
Just hours before the announcement on Sunday night of the new leader, videos posted on social media appeared to show people in Tehran chanting “Death to Mojtaba”.
Although the internet blackout imposed by the regime on the first day of war continues, some Iranians have been sending texts abroad.
“People for now are waiting to see if Trump will assassinate him, since he said that if he doesn’t like the next leader, he will kill him,” said Nima, 21, a student based in Khamenei’s home town, Mashhad.
Mojtaba, 56, has kept a low profile but has close ties to the paramilitary Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and has been accused of leading the IRGC’s feared volunteer militia, the Basij. A discreet figure who rarely appeared in public, Mojtaba has yet to address the nation.
“He is well known for one thing,” said Nima, as “way more of a hardliner than his father was, due to his strong connections to the Basij and the IRGC. These security institutions were and are largely in Mojtaba’s hands.”
State media reported that the 28 February strike that killed his father, who ruled for 37 years, also killed several other members of the family, including Mojtaba’s wife and son. There are rumours the new supreme leader was himself wounded.
Now, the atmosphere in Iran, said Nima, “will become more repressive and security-driven under him”, adding: “That is, if he survives.”
A national crackdown has continued despite the war. The prosecutor general of the country has issued a warning to Iranians outside Iran that anything deemed to be cooperation with the US and Israel could lead to the confiscation of their property and hanging.
Another anti-government protester, Farzad, 26, based in west Tehran, said the regime’s forces had been riding across the streets and chanting “God is great” for the past 24 hours.
“They all look like they’re on steroids because the death of Khamenei and members of his family have really angered them,” he said. “He lost his family and he will definitely consider protesters responsible for this war.”
Mojtaba was chosen by the surviving regime to show Donald Trump that “they won’t back down”, said Farzad. “This war will go on for a while … and we don’t intend to protest under these airstrikes and the Basijis on bikes who are obviously high on power.”
The younger Khamenei represents continuity to his supporters – a digitally rendered image has been circulating on pro-regime channels of Ali Khamenei handing over a folded national flag to his son, symbolising the handover of the guardianship of the country.
And at a pro-regime rally on Monday, university student Zahra Mirbagheri, 21, told Reuters that Mojtaba’s appointment was “a slap in the face to our enemies who thought the system will collapse with the killing of his father”.
But critics have pointed out that the regime lends its credibility on being founded by a 1979 revolt against monarchy, which toppled the pro-western shah in 1979. Now its rule is marked by corruption, mismanagement and violence.
Another activist in Tehran sarcastically pledged allegiance to the new “crown prince”. “All hail the king,” they said. “Who would have thought the operation ‘Epic Fury’ would turn out to be the operation epic failure where they managed to convince the hardliners to bring back monarchy?” they added.
“Kudos to the US president for the success of another mission impossible. It’s ironic, but funny really. We are being taken for a fool and the show has just begun. Wait and watch how disastrous this decision is going to be not only for us, but also for the world, because Khamenei 2.0 is going to be doing exactly what the IRGC wants and not the other way around.”
* Some names have been changed
