Khamenei's three succession options, and the crackdown and arrests of dissenters within the regime

What he says

An English translation of the talk, which is in Persian. It was made with AI from YouTube's automatic captions and may contain errors; the Persian transcript is authoritative. Click a timestamp to jump to that part of the video.

0:01 Hello. It is Monday, 20 Bahman 1404, February 9, 2026. Mr. Khamenei, as it is said, has recorded a video to be released after his death, in which he has designated his successor. Although this video is naturally highly confidential, it is said that in it he has introduced his son Mojtaba as his successor, presumably with some explanations he has given. But beyond that, he has considered that if, in the interval in which he himself, say, dies or is killed, something has happened to Mojtaba, the next person after him should be Asghar Mir-Hejazi, who for years, since the beginning of his leadership,

1:02 has been with him and is in fact the head of intelligence of the Office of the Leader, and in a way one could say he is perhaps the third person in the Office. In practice he has been at the center of all the crackdowns and all the events, and in the massacres, including the recent massacre, he has been a key and principal figure. Mr. Asghar Mir-Hejazi, who is a cleric and from the Haghani School, was at one time a deputy to Mr. Qoddusi, and after that he was a deputy minister of intelligence, and when Khamenei became Leader he joined his team. From the beginning of that leadership until now, he has been responsible for intelligence and for coordinating, in fact, the

1:56 intelligence organizations that the regime has. And if something happens to Asghar Hejazi, the third person considered is Mohseni-Ejei, someone who was also a deputy minister of intelligence and is now the head of the judiciary, a partner in the killings and the apparatus of repression, and also one of the thieving mafias who has his own gang and so on. Because the structure of the Islamic Republic is a group of thieving mafia gangs standing on top of a machine of repression whose leadership and center are in the hands of Khamenei, Mojtaba, Asghar Hejazi, and lie within the Office of the Leader.

2:52 Amid such a decision that Khamenei has in fact made, thinking that by massacring people and repression he can rest easy for a while and hold on to the country, there was apparently a meeting of the executive board of the Reform Front, which consists of 28 parties, organizations and so on. There, the proposal was raised that a salvation council be formed with Mr. Karroubi, Rouhani, Nategh-Nouri, Khatami and Hassan Khomeini in it; that they go and talk with Khamenei and ask him to resign or to change his course, and if he agreed to hand over his powers, they

3:47 would become the core that would form a national council, a national salvation council, whatever name we give it, to bring the country to calm. But since the regime has for a long time been eavesdropping on such meetings and keeping an eye on them, IRGC Intelligence began arresting the members of this meeting. That is, Ms. Azar Mansouri, the secretary-general of this very Reform Front, has been arrested, and her lawyer has said there is no news at all about her condition. Ebrahim Asgharzadeh, Javad Emam and Mohsen Aminzadeh are among those from this so-called leadership council of the Reform Front who have been arrested. In addition,

4:45 several people such as Mohsen Armin, Badrossadat Mofidi and Feizollah Arabsorkhi have also been summoned and must go to the prosecutor's office tomorrow, Tuesday, and they may arrest them too. In the past week, before this, Abdollah Momeni, Mehdi Mahmoudian and Vida Rabbani, three members of the group of 17 who had issued a statement calling for Khamenei to step down, were arrested. Likewise Ghorban Behzadian-Nejad, who is also one of those 17 and was one of Mr. Engineer Mousavi's advisers, was arrested. It is said that Ms. Vida Rabbani has gone on hunger strike in prison. Today Mr. Shakourirad, whose remarks were circulated on

5:42 social media, in which he had said that apparently the regime itself commits violence and kills people, citing the example of the Woman, Life, Freedom movement, so that it then has a pretext for repression, was arrested, and so was Hossein Karroubi, Mr. Karroubi's son. Of those who attended the memorial service for Mr. Alikordi in Mashhad, they arrested many, including Ms. Narges Mohammadi, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate, who apparently has also gone on hunger strike in prison. Moreover, she was sentenced to six and a half years in prison and two years of exile to the town of Khosf, which lies on the edge of the desert in South Khorasan. Since

6:46 Ms. Mohammadi has been saying for a long time that "I do not recognize the judiciary of the Islamic Republic at all," and she neither goes to court nor says anything nor files an objection, they will probably uphold this first-instance ruling as is, with no so-called request for appeal, and they have handed down this sentence for Ms. Narges Mohammadi as well. So it can be seen that Khamenei has extended the atmosphere of terror and fear that he sought to create in society through massacre and crimes against humanity, and anyone within the regime who, as they themselves put it, approaches the red line, which is Khamenei and the issue of succession and so on, he

7:38 is arresting as well. In fact, he is showing zero tolerance, exactly like the situations in which, for example, the likes of Stalin, or this Mr. Xi Jinping in China and others acted, or Putin acts now. In fact, the dictator wants to say that he has the final word, he alone decides, no one has the right to any ifs, buts or questions, and anyone who comes close to this domain will be arrested. Of course, a real question mark remains here, namely: what does Mr. Pezeshkian intend to do? He was the candidate of this very Reform Front, and many of these same people who have now been arrested endorsed him, campaigned for him, gave speeches and were in his campaign headquarters. He,

8:38 whose government has in fact become known as the reformists' government, what will his reaction be? Someone about whom people like this Mr. Asgharzadeh said, "If you elect Pezeshkian, if they so much as slap a person, a woman or a girl in the street, he will resign." Well, now, congratulations, they have killed, arrested and imprisoned thousands upon thousands of people and so on; on top of that, they have arrested the Reform Front itself, and it is not clear what this Mr. Pezeshkian is still standing at the head of the government for. As for Khamenei, he usually came on 19 Bahman, which is called Air Force Day, and the

9:33 Air Force personnel would gather and he would give a speech. Out of fear, he did not come to this ceremony this year either, and instead he issued a statement saying that people should come out on 22 Bahman, that is, the day after tomorrow, and support the regime. Of course, he has killed and massacred the people; what remains is that they gather a bunch of "Sandis-eaters," however many they can muster, to come and stage a regime march. Meanwhile, on Wednesday Mr. Netanyahu will meet Mr. Trump in Washington. This meeting was supposed to take place a week later, but Mr. Netanyahu moved it up. He is coming to Washington tomorrow, Tuesday, for the Wednesday meeting, and it is said that his point is, first, the resolution of the issue of those

10:32 400 kilograms of uranium, four hundred and some kilograms of uranium, with which 10 atomic bombs could be built, and then the missile issues, which Israel says are an existential matter for it, because the leadership of the Islamic Republic still seeks the destruction of Israel. How much Mr. Netanyahu can influence Mr. Trump's plan or Mr. Trump's decision is unclear, especially since Mr. Vance, rightly in my opinion, has stated that Mr. Trump will personally decide about Iran himself. On the other hand, Mr. Trump has also told the Iranian delegation to come with something substantial next time,

11:28 because Trump's temperament is such that he is in a hurry with things and wants to get results quickly so he can give interviews about it. Also, Mr. Ali Larijani has gone to Muscat; it has not been said for what purpose, for what talks he has gone to Oman, but Mr. Araghchi has raised murmurs about a possible change of venue for the next round away from Oman. In hope of victory for Iran and Iranians.