#supreme-leader-death

#supreme-leader-death

The power consolidation under way in Iran is structural rather than personal. The war has reinforced a broader regime of securitised rule whose logic exceeds any one successor.

"The essence of oligarchical rule," George Orwell wrote in 1984, "is the persistence of a certain world-view and a certain way of life, imposed by the dead upon the living." For nearly four decades, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei presided over exactly that. He did not build the Islamic Republic of Iran. He inherited it from its founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who in 1979 led a revolution that deposed a U.S.-aligned monarchy and replaced it with an Islamist theocracy.

Mojtaba was announced as supreme leader on March 9 after his fellow hardliners rallied behind him to succeed his father. His public response was limited to a written statement on Telegram three days later, intensifying the speculation about how badly he was wounded during Israel's strike on his father's residence.

Japan estimates that the missiles reached a maximum altitude of 80 kilometres (50 miles) and flew approximately 340 kilometres before landing near the east coast of the Korean Peninsula, outside Tokyo's exclusive economic zone. Early reports indicate that no damage has been reported by nearby aircraft or ships.

For decades, the son of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had been a shadowy figure in Iranian politics, rarely seen in public and almost never heard speaking. He has never given interviews, has held no elected office and appears publicly only on rare ceremonial occasions. Even among political insiders, knowledge of his views is fragmentary.

Our Navy's forces for attacking from under and above water will grow rapidly. The arming of the Navy with nuclear weapons is making satisfactory progress. All these successes constitute a radical change in defending our maritime sovereignty, something that we have not achieved for half a century.

Kim presented the rifles to senior party and military officials on Friday, calling them a sign of his absolute trust and gratitude for their commitment over the past five years since the last Workers' Party of Korea congress in 2021, according to North Korea's official Korean Central News Agency on Saturday.

They were denied basic human rights and forced to endure extreme hardship. Official promises of free education and healthcare plus guaranteed jobs and housing had been a cruel mirage. And to their horror, they were prevented from travelling to Japan to visit the families they had left behind. But this week, after years of campaigning, four settlers who had escaped to Japan secured justice when a court in Tokyo ordered the North Korean government to pay each of them at least 20m yen in compensation.

South Korea hosts about 28,500 US troops in combined defence against North Korea's military threat and Seoul has raised its defence budget by 7.5% for this year. South Korea is capable of taking primary responsibility for deterring North Korea with critical but more limited US support, said the National Defense Strategy, a document that guides the Pentagon's policies. This shift in the balance of responsibility is consistent with America's interest in updating US force posture on the Korean Peninsula, the document added.

China's drive to modernize its military to rival the US armed forces is running parallel with an aggressive purge of its senior leaders. The People's Liberation Army has been repeatedly shaken by a massive anti-corruption campaign led by Chinese leader Xi Jinping. Now, the military leadership is under renewed scrutiny after one of China's most senior generals was placed under investigation.