DUBAI/LONDON — Iran’s 86-year-old Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei cuts an increasingly lonely figure.
Khamenei has seen his main military and security advisers killed by Israeli air strikes, leaving major holes in his inner circle and raising the risk of strategic errors, according to five people familiar with his decision-making process.
One of those sources, who regularly attends meetings with Khamenei, described the risk of miscalculation to Iran on issues of defence and internal stability as “extremely dangerous”.
Several senior military commanders have been killed since Friday including Khamenei’s main advisers from the Revolutionary Guards, Iran’s elite military force: the Guards’ overall commander Hossein Salami, its aerospace chief Amir Ali Hajizadeh who headed Iran’s ballistic missile programme and spymaster Mohammad Kazemi.
These men were part of the supreme leader’s inner circle of roughly 15-20 advisers comprising Guards commanders, clerics, and politicians, according to the sources who include three people who attend or have attended meetings with the leader on major issues and two close to officials who regularly attend.
The loose group meets on an ad-hoc basis, when Khamenei’s office reaches out to relevant advisers to gather at his compound in Tehran to discuss an important decision, all the people said. Members are characterised by unwavering loyalty to him and the ideology of the Islamic Republic, they added.
Khamenei, who was imprisoned before the 1979 revolution and maimed by a bomb attack before becoming leader in 1989, is profoundly committed to maintaining Iran’s Islamic system of government and deeply mistrustful of the West.
Under Iran’s system of government he has supreme command of the armed forces, the power to declare war, and can appoint or dismiss senior figures including military commanders and judges.
