Irán ha elegido al clérigo Mojtaba Jameneí para suceder a su padre, el fallecido Ali Jameneí, como líder supremo del país, han anunciado este domingo a última hora varios medios oficiales iraníes. La designación de quien ya es el tercer máximo dirigente en los 47 años de historia de la República Islámica constituye todo un desafío al presidente de Estados Unidos, Donald Trump, que hace días tildó su posible elección como “inaceptable”. Horas antes de que se confirmara el nombramiento, el mandatario había advertido de que el nuevo líder iraní “no duraría mucho” si no contaba con su aprobación. Israel ha amenazado también con acabar con “cualquier sucesor” de Ali Jameneí, el jefe de Estado de 86 años al que su ejército mató con un bombardeo en Teherán el 28 de febrero, el primer día de la guerra.

El nombramiento del segundo hijo del fallecido líder supremo es, ante todo, “un dedo medio” extendido ante Trump y Estados Unidos, pronosticaba hace días en X el investigador iraní Ali Alfoneh, del Instituto de Estudios Árabes del Golfo (AGSI, por sus siglas en inglés). Su elección, reitera este experto en un correo electrónico desde Washington, constituye un “desafío claro a Estados Unidos e Israel”. Con él, el régimen islámico viene a espetarle a Trump: “ Si matáis a un Jameneí, elegiremos a otro”, resume. Jameneí es además un clérigo del que se cree que mantiene fuertes lazos con el aparato militar iraní y su principal actor, la Guardia Revolucionaria.

Seyed Mojtaba Jameneí —Seyed es el tratamiento para los descendientes directos del profeta Mahoma— nació en Mashhad, en el este de Irán, hace 56 años. Se sabe poco de él, destaca Alfoneh, pues “nunca ha concedido entrevistas y solo aparece en público dos veces al año: en los desfiles del día de la Revolución, el 11 de febrero, y del día de Al Quds (Jerusalén), el último viernes del mes de Ramadán”.

Entre lo que sí se sabe, figuran datos como que participó brevemente en la guerra entre Irán e Irak en 1986, cuando con 17 años se incorporó al batallón Habib ibn Mazaher de la 27.ª División Mohammad Rasulollah, vinculada a la Guardia Revolucionaria. También que cuando su padre fue nombrado líder supremo, en 1989, se fue involucrando progresivamente en el entramado del poder, hasta convertirse en un nexo entre la oficina del líder supremo, la milicia Basij, que depende también de la Guardia Revolucionaria, y el aparato de seguridad. Lo hizo sin convertirse por ello en una figura con mucha presencia ante la opinión pública iraní. Siempre ha permanecido en la sombra.

Esa imagen opaca se vio empañada aún más cuando, a finales del pasado mes de enero, una investigación de la agencia Bloomberg lo vinculó con una compleja red millonaria de inversiones y propiedades en Europa y Oriente Próximo. El medio de comunicación atribuía ese entramado financiero a la venta de petróleo iraní eludiendo las sanciones internacionales contra Irán. Las autoridades del país lo han negado rotundamente.

La designación de este clérigo repite en un aspecto la elección de su padre en 1989. Cuando Ali Jameneí fue seleccionado como sucesor del fundador de la República Islámica, Ruholá Jomeini, no contaba con las altas credenciales religiosas necesarias para ello. No solo no era un marjá (una fuente de emulación para los chiíes) sino que ni siquiera era ayatolá, sino un rango clerical inferior, hojatoleslam. Muy pronto fue elevado al estatus de ayatolá.

Con su hijo parece haber sucedido lo mismo. Hasta ahora se consideraba que su rango era el de hojatoleslam. Sin embargo, la Asamblea de Expertos que lo ha elegido y los medios iraníes se refieren a él ya como ayatolá, por lo que parece gozar ya de esa jerarquía superior.

Una diferencia notable con su padre, es, sin embargo, que Mojtaba Jameneí carece de una trayectoria política conocida ni tampoco ha ocupado cargos relevantes en las instituciones iraníes, más allá de esa actuación en la sombra que se le atribuye. Antes de ser nombrado líder supremo, Ali Jameneí había sido presidente de Irán entre 1981 y 1989.

“Es posible que no cumpla plenamente los requisitos constitucionales para el liderazgo, tal y como se definen en el artículo 109 de la Constitución”, destaca Alfoneh, que recuerda también cuál se consideraba el principal obstáculo para la designación del hijo del fallecido líder supremo. Esa barrera era “el hecho de que un régimen que se opone a la monarquía” como es la República Islámica —proclamada tras la revolución que derrocó a la dinastía Pahleví en 1979— “generalmente aborrece un liderazgo hereditario”. Según varias fuentes del régimen iraní, el propio Ali Jameneí, estando en vida, descartó por ese motivo a su hijo como sucesor. La guerra ha podido contribuir a eliminar ese inconveniente.

Otras circunstancias jugaban en favor de Mojtaba Jameneí. La primera es que el pasado jueves Trump tildó su nombramiento de “inaceptable” y se arrogó un supuesto derecho a participar en la elección del nuevo líder iraní. Esas declaraciones probablemente le dieron un espaldarazo al convertir su designación en una bofetada al presidente de Estados Unidos, uno de los dos países que ha desatado la guerra contra Irán.

Un “mártir viviente”

Otro punto a su favor, recuerda Alfoneh, es que Israel intentó asesinarlo hace días en otro bombardeo. Mojtaba Jameneí sobrevivió, pero quedó herido. Ese intento de asesinato frustrado y “el martirio” el 28 de febrero de su padre, de su madre, de su mujer, de su hijo y de su hermana, entre otros parientes —todos muertos en el bombardeo del complejo del líder supremo dirigido a matar a Ali Jameneí— le dota de un aura: la de ser un “mártir viviente”, destaca el experto. Ese concepto chií designa a alguien que ha sido herido, física o moralmente, en un intento de asesinato o en una guerra sagrada y que ha mostrado así su entrega a Dios y su disposición al sacrificio.

Ese “capital simbólico”, destaca Alfoneh, “podría ser suficiente para movilizar aproximadamente al 10% de la población iraní que demostró su apoyo al régimen en las elecciones presidenciales de 2023″.

Luciano Zaccara, profesor de la Universidad de Georgetown en Qatar, resume la elección del tercer líder supremo de la República Islámica con una palabra: ”continuidad”. Con Mojtaba Jameneí, dice, “nada va a cambiar” en la República Islámica.

Horas antes de que se confirmara que Jameneí hijo sería el nuevo líder supremo, varios de los 88 clérigos que se sientan en la Asamblea de Expertos, el organismo encargado formalmente de elegir al sucesor del líder supremo a su muerte, habían avanzado que existía ya un consenso sobre el elegido, si bien no anunciaron su nombre.

“La elección del liderazgo ya se ha efectuado y el líder ha sido designado”, había dicho el ayatolá Ahmad Alamolhoda, un clérigo ultraconservador considerado cercano al ala dura de la República Islámica, a la agencia Tasnim.

Otro integrante de ese organismo clerical, Mohsen Heidari, había dado una pista que apuntaba ya a Jameneí hijo, a quien desde hace días se consideraba el favorito para suceder a su padre. En un vídeo difundido por los medios oficiales iraníes, Heidari desvelaba que el candidato había sido seleccionado basándose en una instrucción del ayatolá Jameneí: la que recomendaba que el máximo líder de Irán fuera alguien “odiado por el enemigo”.

As the days go by, the goal and expected duration of the offensive against Iran is increasingly unclear. The conflict is expanding across the Middle East, and despite Washington’s enthusiastic pronouncements, seems to be growing ever more entangled. U.S. President Donald Trump, on the one hand, suggests that his objective is regime change, but on the other, he also asserts that the goal is to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. And he is offering increasingly long timeframes. If on Monday he spoke of four or five weeks, now he is warning that this deadline could be extended and added that “we have the capability to go far longer than that.”

The Pentagon, for its part, says the war will require “time” and has announced the deployment of reinforcements. And before a closed-door briefing with lawmakers, Secretary of State Marco Rubio repeated his administration’s argument that the reason for the attack was “preventive.” But this time he added a new piece of information: that Israel was going to strike Iran first and that Tehran, in that case, would have bombed U.S. positions in retaliation.

That the operation is going to be longer than a euphoric Trump suggested on Saturday seems to be one of the conclusions the White House is reaching, despite the president insisting that the campaign is progressing faster than expected and that successes are accumulating by the hour. Trump even claimed Operation Epic Fury could be concluded in “two or three days.” On Sunday, he said the estimate had always been “four or five weeks.” At a veterans’ medal ceremony at the White House this Monday, the Republican once again extended the timeline.

“Right from the beginning, we projected four to five weeks, but we have the capability to go far longer than that,” Trump declared during the ceremony at the White House, in the presence of his Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Dan Caine, and his Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth.

Since the operation began on Saturday, Trump’s explanations have come through unorthodox channels. Unlike previous military interventions, he has not held a televised press conference. Instead, he has released two videos announcing the launch and continuation of the attacks, posted a few messages on social media, and made numerous comments to various media outlets in telephone interviews. The result has been a peculiar mix of conflicting accounts, in which the White House occupant has contradicted himself and the reports coming from the Pentagon.

This weekend, senior U.S. officials speaking on condition of anonymity justified the offensive as a “preemptive” strike because, they said, Iran was planning to bomb U.S. targets imminently. On Sunday, representatives of the Trump administration informed congressional staff in closed-door briefings that U.S. intelligence services did not believe Iran was preparing preemptive attacks against the U.S., according to the Associated Press, which cited three sources familiar with those briefings.

In a closed-door briefing at the Capitol to inform key lawmakers from both parties about the conflict, State Secretary Rubio offered a new variation on the reason for the preemptive strike: the U.S. believed that Israel was preparing to bomb the Islamic Republic and, in that case, Tehran would in turn strike U.S. forces in the Middle East. “We knew that there was going to be an Israeli action. We knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces, and we knew that if we didn’t preemptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties,” he said.

Over the weekend, the U.S. president and his inner circle offered divergent objectives. In his opening remarks, Trump urged the Iranians to rise up and seize control of their government. A day later, the White House issued a statement asserting that the goal of the attacks was in fact to dismantle Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs. Senator Lindsey Graham, a staunch Trump supporter who frequently acts as his informal spokesperson, expressed similar sentiments in various appearances on U.S. television programs.

The president himself also hinted at his willingness to keep the new leaders of the ayatollahs’ regime in power, following the death of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, in bombings on Saturday. This would be a solution very similar to the formula used in Venezuela, where after the capture of former president Nicolás Maduro, the old Chavista leaders remain in power. According to a telephone interview with The Atlantic, the Republican leader is prepared to engage in talks with these new leaders.

Later, Trump pointed out that the same missiles that killed Khamenei also eliminated 48 high-ranking regime officials, including some names he had considered to take over the country. Hours later, in a second video, he again urged Iranians to “take back their country” and wrest control from the regime, and called on the armed forces to lay down their weapons under the promise of immunity. The United States will be there to help, he promised. This Monday, however, he made no mention of those appeals.

And in another news conference on Monday, the first by the U.S. government since the bombing began, the Pentagon reiterated that the objectives do not include the end of the theocratic system. “This is not a so-called regime change war, but the regime sure did change and the world is better off for it,” Hegseth maintained.

“They have a goal, but it’s not regime change. It’s regime implosion,” says Trita Parsi, vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. “The hope is to degrade Iranian capabilities, or the repressive capabilities of the state, as much as possible, in the hope that miraculously the Iranian people will rise up and seize power. And that whatever remains of support for the Iranian system will somehow dissolve.”

For now, the Pentagon is preparing for a prolonged conflict. At the news conference, the administration warned a public with very little tolerance for combat casualties that there will be more deaths and injuries among its soldiers. On Monday, the Department of Defense announced the death of one of the service members wounded on Sunday by an Iranian missile at a U.S. military base in Kuwait, bringing the number of American deaths to six. Another 18 soldiers are seriously wounded, triple the number that Central Command provided on Sunday.

It is unclear whether Washington plans to deploy troops on Iranian soil as part of the operation, something experts consider essential if the objective is to seize control of the country or impose regime change. The Pentagon has stated that it currently has no soldiers on the ground, but has declined to clarify whether it plans to do so in the future. Trump, for his part, has not ruled it out. And in statements to CNN, he warned that the conflict could still escalate: according to him, “we haven’t even started hitting them hard. The big wave hasn’t even happened. The big one is coming soon.”

Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition

The attack on Iran launched by the United States and Israel last weekend has elicited a mixed reaction from the Iranian diaspora in the United States. Some people have been euphoric since the early hours of Saturday, when the strikes began, while others have a more critical view of a conflict that the Trump administration has unilaterally unleashed without consulting Congress or taking the international community into account.

“It’s a dream come true,” says Mike Oveysi, speaking from his restaurant, Amoo’s. Located in McLean, Virginia, this small, family-run establishment serving traditional Iranian food is a favorite among the Iranian community in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area. “This isn’t an attack against Iran. This attack is for Iran,” he asserts. “It’s to help the 90 million people who are being held hostage by a group with a brutal ideology. They use our wealth, our money, our country just to enrich themselves and mass-murder anyone who doesn’t subscribe to their narrative.”

Mike Oveysi’s family arrived in the United States in 1994, fleeing the ayatollahs’ regime. Mike’s father was a pilot for Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last monarch of Iran, dethroned by the Islamist revolution in 1979. He spent seven years in prison before escaping to Turkey. From there, he traveled to the United States in 1994, where he sought refuge with his wife and children. Mike Oveysi was 16 years old at the time. As an adult, he has become one of the most vocal critics of the ayatollahs’ regime. He organizes and participates in numerous protests, which he promotes through his Instagram page, where he has approximately 250,000 followers.

Like him, more than 400,000 people of Iranian descent live in the United States, according to 2020 census data. More than half of them live in California, primarily in the city of Los Angeles, in an enclave known as Tehrangeles. They are also scattered throughout the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area, which includes Maryland and Virginia, and in New York.

Oveysi still has family in Iran, including a sister, uncles, and cousins, but he is confident that civilian deaths from the conflict will not be high because “they say the attacks are very precise.” Through his social media and a podcast, he stays in touch with Iranians who remain in the country and asserts that 90% of the population supports change. In his opinion, it will happen: “There will definitely be a revolution.”

Since the weekend, protests have taken place across the country, both celebrating and condemning the U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iran. In DC, a group of demonstrators gathered in the area of Georgetown on Saturday to celebrate the death of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, and to pay tribute to the thousands of Iranians killed by the ayatollahs’ regime during protests last month. A day later, in New York, a crowd marched from the United Nations headquarters in Manhattan to Times Square, carrying red, green, and white flags, some bearing the Arabic word “Allah.”

Reza Ebrahimi participated in that protest. The young man, who belongs to the Lion Sun NY group, a movement “for a free Iran” led by Prince Reza Pahlavi, says that, like him, other Iranians in the United States have begun to have hope of regaining their homeland. “It’s been 47 years, we were fighting for this regime change, we lost many lives, [people] have paid a high price for this, but we are finally getting it,” he says. “The feeling is one of emotion; Iranians inside and outside Iran are happy, we are finally getting our freedom. People are so happy, you have no idea, we can’t sleep at night. We are worried about our families, but we finally did it.”

Bombs are not the solution

Others, however, are more critical of the Trump administration’s actions. This Monday, dozens of people gathered at Columbus Circle in Manhattan, holding signs that not only called for a halt to “a new war in the Middle East,” but also demanded that the Iranians “decide their own future,” not the United States or Israel.

Yehuda Litan arrived at the site after being called upon by the National Iranian American Council and other organizations to protest a conflict that, they say, “has the potential to rapidly escalate into a devastating regional war that will bring unimaginable death and destruction.” “Civilized people are fed up with war,” he asserts. “There is no reason to kill thousands of people for no reason. Americans are fed up with war. So we came here to show our solidarity with all the people of the region who have been subjected to the relentless Zionist American and Israeli attacks. The United States should mind its own business.”

For Majid Sadeghpour, political director of the Organization of Iranian American Communities (OIAC), which unites the Iranian diaspora that advocates for a democratic and secular republic in Iran, “bombing Iran is not the solution.” “A political solution is needed,” he points out.

Sadeghpour left his country when he was 17 and spent a year in Turkey before seeking refuge in the United States in 1984. He experienced the brutality of the Ayatollahs’ government firsthand when his brother was executed in 1988. The OIAC brings together many Iranians who have had similar “or worse” experiences, he says, but they do not support international intervention like the one being carried out by the U.S. and Israel. “If you come from a culture that is at least 3,000 years old, you should be outraged when your country is bombed from abroad, regardless of who is in charge,” he asserts. “I want the fight against these bastards to be waged by Iranians,” he explains.

Sadeghpour defends the legitimacy of Iran’s National Council of Resistance (NCRI), which has opposed the Islamist regime for years, to lead a transitional period. His feelings about the current situation are mixed, because he admits he is pleased to see Iran’s Revolutionary Guard “feeling the pain they have inflicted on the people all these years,” but insists that a political solution is necessary.

“Regime change is very difficult to achieve from the air. After all, this is Iran. This isn’t Gaza. This isn’t Venezuela,” Sadeghopour emphasizes. “This country is twice the size of Texas. It has an impenetrable geography, and those sitting there right now are wounded animals cornered by their opponents, with only their teeth left, ready to bite until they’re destroyed. This has to be fought on the ground.”

Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition