UPDATE - KHAMENEI DEATH BEING CONCEALED?

Some reports coming out of Iran deny the Supreme Leader has died or IS EVEN ILL!

Over the past month, rumors circulated that he was in a coma and his ruthless son Mojtaba was ruling (with Ahmadi-Nejad's help) in his father's name.

This son visits prisons just to watch and participate in torture sessions of arrested demonstrators and take pleasure in raping some of them himself!

Denial of Khamenei Senior's death has to overcome some visible changes:

1. Government buildings are being draped in black cloth. (Reports on this come from multiple Twitters).

2. All Islamic Iranian TV announcers have suddenly turned to wearind all black clothing.

3. Bassiji Suppression forces have poured into the streets to enforce crowd control and prevent gatherings, which have not yet taken place.

4. The constant grumbling of clerics about the Supreme Ruler and efforts to replace him with a Ruling Committee have abruptly ceased.

Having him dead instead of the disruptive campaign to unseat him has solved their complaints and now they can go ahead with the "succession" process.

It took nearly two months from the time Ayatollah Khomeini went to hospital and fell into a coma till he was OFFICIALLY  pronounced dead.

Like the isolated Khamenei today, he was ordered isolated with only his son Ahmad (and his low level cleric companion at the time, the present ruler) allowed in his room.

Meanwhile edicts with spider crawl forged signatures but with Khomeini's official seal emerged from that room. Including the one which rejected the formerly selected successor Ayatollah Montazeri (a relatively enlightened cleric) and replacing him with Ali Khamenei, who was a Hojat-ol-Islam not an Ayatollah let alone the Grand Ayatollah needed to fill that position.

Two Ayatollahs have to declare another Ayatollah their religious/spiritual mentor to have the latter become a Grand Ayatollah. Ayatollah Shahroodi in exile from Iraq provided one vote and was rewarded by being appointed head of the Judiciary.

The other was loony tunes Ayatollah Mesbah-Yazdi, President Ahmadi-Nejad's spiritual mentor. These two believe that there has to be so much oppression, suffering, misery, death and bloodshed taking place in our world that the 12th descendent of Mohammad, a 13-year boy who hid down a well at Jamkaran, Iran, to avoid being killed and never reappeared and the Imam of the End Times would notice and return to create a global Caliphate for Islam to rule the planet.

Even the heartless Khomeini, who had many tens of thousand killed in his prisons and over another million slaughtered in the Iran-Iraq war could not stomach Mesbah Yazdi's religious philosophy and banned his cultish activites, which went underground till after Khomeini's death.

Currently the clerical and IRGC (Revolutionary Guard Corps) power conflicts, with the IRGC recently taking greater control of the Bassiji and teh schisms among the senior Ayatollahs seems to be preventing a formal declaration taht Khamenei has died.

They are simply not ready nor have worked out their interactions without a Superme Ruler at teh tip of the pyramid.

So, while every indication points to the death of the Supreme Ruler being the reality, nobody is  ready to admit it officially and face the probably unruly reactions of the poulace. Who more likely than not will rejoice the death and flood the streets in a show of delight.

Something that could escalate into a major revolt against the regime.

Early morning in Tehran right now. We should be able to know more in a few hours - while we sleep.

ALSO Good evaluation from Ali Alfoneh - American.com


The passing of Khamenei would represent a seismic shift in the Islamic Republic’s power equations. With no successor-designate, Khamenei’s death would unleash a huge power struggle.

Several things will happen once Khamenei dies. Officially, the Assembly of Experts, currently headed by former President Hashemi Rafsanjani, anoints the next Supreme Leader. Behind the scenes, however, the major power brokers—whether on the assembly or not—will jockey for power and seek consensus. If the decision is fractious, the assembly may decide to appoint a clerical council in the interregnum period.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) will seek to influence the selection, either of the interregnum council or of the next Supreme Leader. The most radical scenario—but an increasingly plausible one—would be for the IRGC to lobby to abolish the institution of leadership, thereby transforming the Islamic Republic into a presidential system and giving ultimate power to current president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a veteran of the IRGC and its primary benefactor.

Under any circumstance, governance in the Islamic Republic is fast degenerating into a military dictatorship with an eclectic ideology composed of Shi’a Messianism, Iranian nationalism, and populism.