Who will be Iran’s next leader?; How Ukraine might help defend the Gulf

0:00Today on State of the World, who will be Iran's next leader, and how Ukraine might help defend the Gulf.

0:10You're listening to State of the World from NPR. We bring you the day's most vital international stories, up close where they're happening. It's Thursday, March 5th. I'm Greg Dixon. In a few minutes, we'll hear what the U.S. and Gulf countries can learn from Ukraine about defending themselves from drone attacks. First, in Iran, a panel of clerics will decide who will be the next leader of the fundamentalist regime. That's after Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed in recent airstrikes. His son is considered the frontrunner. But as NPR's Jackie Northam tells us, whoever is named, there's likely to be big changes after nearly 40 years of rule by the same person.

0:53In the last few years before his death, Ayatollah Khamenei would periodically suggest names of potential successors to the Council of Experts, a group of 88 clerics charged with deciding Iran's next supreme leader. They're now having to meet virtually because of the war. Earlier this week, the names included the grandson of the Islamic Republic's founding father, Ayatollah Khomeini, some hardliners, moderates, and Khamenei's 56-year-old son, Mojtaba. He's kind of an unknown quantity. He's sort of a guy who you see in pictures, in meetings, that sort of thing, kind of in the background. Afshan Ostavar is an Iran specialist and the author of Wars of Ambition.

1:35the United States, Iran, and the struggle for the Middle East. He says Mojtaba is considered a hardliner who's closely associated with a violent crackdown on protesters in 2009. But Ostevar says Mojtaba has important connections, including to the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or IRGC. Of all the candidates that were put out there, he was the one that was closest to the IRGC. He was also very well connected in his father's own office. And to me, those are the two most important parts of the regime. And so if they support you, then you're likely to be the next leader. Osevar says if Mochdaba Khamenei is named as Iran's new supreme leader, it will send a signal that the regime wants continuity.

2:17But I think if Mochdaba was elected, what it says is that the regime wants to preserve as much of the status quo as possible, right? So he's a status quo candidate. And I think just about anybody that's going to be picked, if it's not him as going to be a status quo candidate. But Ali Vaiz, director of the Iran Project at the International Crisis Group, says the current system can't be sustained. Iran is weakened from war, widespread protests, and a battered economy. The second republic headed by Ayatollah Khamenei since 1989 is gone, and whatever comes next would be a transformed regime. No one would be able to restore the system's legitimacy without undergoing fundamental structural changes.

3:02It's unlikely that a new supreme leader in Iran will wield as much power as Ayatollah Khamenei, says Jonathan Panikoff, director of the Atlantic Council's Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative and a former intelligence officer. The reality is the balance of power within the Iranian system has shifted over the years. As Khamenei leveraged the guards more and more, they've gained power. They're in every part of the economy. They're in every part of, obviously, the military establishment. Panikoff says a new supreme leader will be deferential to the Revolutionary Guards. Where we end up in a situation in which it's senior officials from the guards fundamentally running the country, and we end up in what's closer to a military dictatorship with a fig leaf to a religious supreme leader than we do with a supreme leader like Ayatollah Khamenei, who's actually calling the shots and has the final word.

3:54Yet, when the late Ayatollah Khamenei was chosen as supreme leader, he was considered weak and pliable. But he proved to be cunning and ruthless and went on to become one of the most powerful leaders in the Middle East. Jackie Northam, NPR News. Ukraine has a lot of experience intercepting Iranian-made drones. They say Russia has launched more than 57 ,000 of them at Ukrainian cities in the last four years of war. Now Iran is using those same Shahid drones to attack American bases in the Middle East. And, as NPR's Joanna Kakissis in Kyiv tells us, Ukraine says it can help. This is what a Shahid drone sounds like flying over Kyiv, a buzzing that's become part of the soundtrack of Russia's war on Ukraine.

4:44Shahid drones are relatively cheap and look like small airplanes. They often carry explosives. Iran has sold them to Russia in the past, but now Iranian forces have used Shahed drones on U.S. sites in the Persian Gulf. Ukraine's military learned on the job how to shoot down Shaheds. Colonel Yuri Cheruvashenko, deputy commander of Ukraine's Air Defense Cover Forces, explains. First, he says, we created mobile air defense groups on land, armed with heavy machine guns. And now, he adds, we are using interceptor drones. Ukraine developed these drones to detect, chase and destroy shahads long before they reached their targets.

5:30Chervashenko says interceptor drones could work well in Gulf nations, for the most part. The terrain there is predominantly flat with little vegetation, leaving mostly unobstructed views, he says. But the temperatures are harsh. The sensors of the interceptor drones might not work properly in extreme heat. Chervashenko has been a soldier for more than a decade and never imagined drones would dominate warfare. Unfortunately, he says, human nature is such that we cannot live in peace forever, and that's regrettable. So the means of waging war evolve. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky says air defense experts are ready to deploy to Gulf nations.

6:17Speaking to reporters in Kyiv, he also said he would consider handing over Ukrainian interceptor drones, but in exchange for PAC-3 missiles. These are used in Patriot anti-aircraft systems to intercept Russia's high-speed ballistic missiles before they hit Ukrainian cities. Supplies are running low, Zelensky says, and may become more scarce if the war in the Middle East widens. That's NPR's Joanna Kikisys in Kyiv.

6:56And that's the State of the World from NPR. Thanks for listening.