Iran’s Supreme Leader uses trusted aide as intermediary following Israeli strikes, prepares succession plans.
By David Brummer, World Israel News
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has suspended all electronic communications and now speaks to top commanders exclusively through a trusted aide, according to reports in several outlets.
The extraordinary security measure reflects growing fears within Tehran’s leadership over Israeli infiltration and targeted assassinations.
Unnamed officials, who said they were familiar with Khamenei’s emergency wartime protocols, described a shaken leadership responding to what they characterized as the most serious threat to Iran’s regime in decades.
“The Israeli infiltration has rattled the Iranian power structure — even Ayatollah Khamenei,” a New York Times report quoted one official as saying.
Khamenei has reportedly taken refuge in a fortified underground bunker and has put contingency plans in place, appointing replacements for key military figures in case of further losses.
The supreme leader has also named three senior clerics as candidates to succeed him if he is killed, directing Iran’s Assembly of Experts to expedite the process should the need arise.
Normally, the selection of a new supreme leader would be a lengthy and deliberative procedure.
The increased secrecy follows a warning by Iranian state-affiliated media advising citizens to avoid unnecessary mobile phone use, citing concerns that Israel has employed cellphone tracking technology to locate and assassinate high-profile targets, including nuclear scientists.
The latest moves come amid intensifying conflict between Iran and Israel, which the United States may now have decisively joined following its destructive attacks on Iran’s main nuclear sites of Fordow, Isfahan, and Natanz.
As fears of regime change or leadership decapitation grow, Khamenei’s unprecedented steps underscore the fragility of Iran’s ruling structure and the seriousness of the current crisis.
Israel’s surprise strikes began June 13, which one Iranian official described as the largest military assault since the Iran-Iraq War, and one which Tehran has struggled to maintain command and control.
Those Israeli attacks, which have concentrated heavily on the capital, are said to have caused more damage to Tehran in a matter of days than Iraqi forces did during the eight-year conflict in the 1980s.
Though initially caught off guard, Iranian forces have launched retaliatory strikes on Israeli territory.
Targets have included civilian infrastructure such as the Soroka Medical Center in Beersheba, a refinery in Haifa, religious sites, the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, and residential areas, marking a dangerous escalation in the conflict.
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