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Mir-Hossein Mousavi Warns of Conspiracy to Pass on Position of Iran Guide to Khamenei's Son

Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei delivers a speech on the occasion of Noruz, the Iranian New Year, in Tehran, March 20, 2022. (AFP)
Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei delivers a speech on the occasion of Noruz, the Iranian New Year, in Tehran, March 20, 2022. (AFP)
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Mir-Hossein Mousavi Warns of Conspiracy to Pass on Position of Iran Guide to Khamenei's Son

Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei delivers a speech on the occasion of Noruz, the Iranian New Year, in Tehran, March 20, 2022. (AFP)
Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei delivers a speech on the occasion of Noruz, the Iranian New Year, in Tehran, March 20, 2022. (AFP)

Iranian reformist leader Mir-Hossein Mousavi, who has been under house arrest for more than a decade, warned against the possibility of one of Ali Khamenei’s sons inheriting the position of the supreme guide – a move that he described as conspiracy.

In an article published by Iran’s Al-Kalima news website, affiliated with Mousavi, the leader pointed to rumors that Mojtaba Khamenei would inherit the position of his father.

Khamenei’s succession has raised controversy in Iran since 2005. But the issue has drawn particular attention after the current president, Ibrahim Raisi, entered the presidential race in 2017, which he lost in favor of his rival, Hassan Rouhani, before he repeated the attempt in 2021 to assume the position of head of the executive body, making him a serious candidate for the position.

A council of senior experts looks into naming the successor to the Iranian spiritual guide, in the event of his death or if he was unable to perform his duties. Supervising the performance of the leader is one of the functions of the council, which includes 88 senior and influential clerics.

Mousavi, his wife Zahra Rahnavard, and his ally Mehdi Karroubi have been under house arrest since February 2011, after they led the Green Movement protests, which questioned the validity of the elections that returned Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to the presidency in 2009.

This is not the first time that the reformist movement in Iran has pointed to the role of the Iranian leader’s son in the ruling establishment, including elections or the possibility of him inheriting the position of his father.

In December 2018, Mehdi Karroubi sent a sharp message to Khamenei, asking him to assume responsibility for his actions over the period in which he served as Iran’s supreme leader.

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Global Interest in Israel's Air-Launched Ballistic Missiles

This handout picture released by the Israeli army on October 26, 2024, shows an Israeli fighter jet departing a hangar at an undisclosed location in Israel. (Photo by AFP)
This handout picture released by the Israeli army on October 26, 2024, shows an Israeli fighter jet departing a hangar at an undisclosed location in Israel. (Photo by AFP)
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Global Interest in Israel's Air-Launched Ballistic Missiles

This handout picture released by the Israeli army on October 26, 2024, shows an Israeli fighter jet departing a hangar at an undisclosed location in Israel. (Photo by AFP)
This handout picture released by the Israeli army on October 26, 2024, shows an Israeli fighter jet departing a hangar at an undisclosed location in Israel. (Photo by AFP)

Israel's effective use of air-launched ballistic missiles in its airstrikes against Iran is expected to pique interest elsewhere in acquiring the weapons, which most major powers have avoided in favor of cruise missiles and glide bombs.
The Israeli Army said its Oct. 26 raid knocked out Iranian missile factories and air defenses in three waves of strikes.
Researchers said that based on satellite imagery, targets included buildings once used in Iran's nuclear program, according to Reuters.
Tehran defends such targets with “a huge variety” of anti-aircraft systems, said Justin Bronk, an airpower and technology expert at London's Royal United Services Institute.
Cruise missiles are easier targets for dense, integrated air defenses than ballistic missiles are.
But ballistic missiles are often fired from known launch points, and most cannot change course in flight.
Experts say high-speed, highly accurate air-launched ballistic missiles such as the Israel Aerospace Industries Rampage get around problems facing ground-based ballistic missiles and air-launched cruise missiles - weapons that use small wings to fly great distances and maintain altitude.
“The main advantage of an ALBM over an ALCM is speed to penetrate defenses,” said Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the James Martin Centre for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in California.
“The downside - accuracy - looks to have been largely solved,” he said.
Ground-launched ballistic missiles - which Iran used to attack Israel twice this year, and which both Ukraine and Russia have used since Russia's invasion in 2022 - are common in the arsenals of many countries. So, too, are cruise missiles.
Because ALBMs are carried by aircraft, their launch points are flexible, helping strike planners.
“The advantage is that being air-launched, they can come from any direction, complicating the task of defending against them,” said Uzi Rubin, a senior researcher at the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security, one of the architects of Israel's missile defenses.
The weapons are not invulnerable to air defenses. In Ukraine, Lockheed Martin Patriot PAC-3 missiles have repeatedly intercepted Russia's Khinzhals.
Many countries, including the United States and Britain, experimented with ALBMs during the Cold War. Only Israel, Russia and China are known to field the weapons now.
The US tested a hypersonic ALBM, the Lockheed Martin AGM-183, but it received no funding for the 2025 fiscal year.
Because it has a large arsenal of cruise missiles and other types of long-range strike weapons, Washington has otherwise shown little interest in ALBMs.
A US Air Force official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said ALBMs are not used in Air Force operations.
Raytheon's SM-6, an air-defense missile that has been repurposed for air-to-air and surface-to-surface missions, also has been tested as an air-launched anti-ship weapon, said a senior US defense technical analyst, who declined to be identified because the matter is sensitive.
In tests the missile was able to strike a small target on land representing the center of mass of a destroyer, the analyst said. Publicly, the SM-6 is not meant for air-to-ground strikes.
Because ALBMs are essentially a combination of guidance, warheads and rocket motors, many countries that have precision weapons already have the capability to pursue them, a defense industry executive said on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.
“This is a clever way of taking a common set of technologies and components and turning it into a very interesting new weapon that gives them far more capability, and therefore options, at a reasonable price,” the executive said.