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If a person is fortunate enough to live into his ninth decade, life often turns toward quiet reflection, relaxation and the comforts of family and community. Not for the 85-year-old Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The sunset years of Iran’s supreme leader have been defined by a series of daunting challenges: regional humiliations, domestic uprisings, the looming threat of war with Israel and a pivotal decision on whether to pursue nuclear weapons — a choice with profound implications for his political legacy and the country he has ruled for 35 years.
In the past 100 days, Mr. Khamenei has endured devastating losses. Israel struck decisive blows against Iran’s so-called axis of resistance, including the assassination of the Hamas leaders Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran and Yahya Sinwar in Gaza and the elimination of Mr. Khamenei’s most important ally, the Lebanese Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah. Additionally, on Oct. 16, the United States sent B-2 stealth bombers — $2 billion aircraft capable of delivering 30,000-pound bunker-busting bombs — to destroy weapons depots in Yemen linked to Iran’s Houthi allies. It was another blow to Iran’s proxy armies and a clear signal to Tehran that its underground nuclear sites are within reach.
Significant domestic setbacks preceded these embarrassments. America’s assassination of the top military commander Gen. Qassem Soleimani in January 2020, followed by Israel’s killing of the nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh that year, underscored the regime’s vulnerabilities. When Mr. Khamenei’s protégé and potential successor, President Ebrahim Raisi, died in a helicopter crash in May, many Iranians suspected internal or external sabotage. Years of mismanagement, plunder and repression, all from a theocratic pedestal, have fueled widespread governmental mistrust and dissent. The national uprising in 2022 and 2023 — known as the Women, Life, Freedom protests — required six months and over 20,000 arrests to extinguish. Even absent strict enforcement from the Biden administration, Iran remains among the countries under the most sanctions in the world.
In short, Mr. Khamenei has spent the autumn of his life violently repressing a population that wants to unseat him and simultaneously engaging in a sophisticated military and financial conflict with Israel and the United States. Now, on the cusp of a major military attack by Israel, a nuclear power, the supreme leader faces a critical choice: whether to pursue nuclear weapons.
Until now, Iran has maintained a strategy of nuclear ambiguity, attempting to deter its adversaries by staying just short of developing a nuclear weapon without the severe economic and diplomatic penalties associated with having one. Although Iranian officials long emphasized that Mr. Khamenei issued a fatwa forbidding nuclear weapons under Islamic law, they now openly acknowledge their capacity to build such weapons if they choose, echoing U.S. intelligence assessments. Iran’s domestic media estimates the total cost of the country’s nuclear program — including sunk expenditures, lost energy revenue and foreign investment because of sanctions — can be measured in the hundreds of billions of dollars, yet it contributes a mere 1 percent to Iran’s energy needs.
Perhaps the most important role that Iran’s nuclear program has served for the past two decades is diverting attention from its cultivation of missiles, drones and potent regional proxies. As a senior Persian Gulf official once told me about the U.S.-led strategy toward Iran: “We spend all of our time trying to prevent them from acquiring a weapon they will never use while neglecting the weapons they and their proxies use against us every single day.”
While the assault on Hezbollah continues — on Tuesday, Israel confirmed it had killed a presumed successor to Mr. Nasrallah — Mr. Khamenei may be compelled to reconsider his nuclear options. But his path to developing a full-fledged nuclear weapon is a minefield, full of potential triggers for covert or overt military action from Israel or the United States. Iran’s nuclear program, much like its security and intelligence services, has been deeply infiltrated by Israeli and U.S. intelligence. Over the past decade and a half, in addition to the routine assassination of its top nuclear scientists, its clandestine nuclear sites have been exposed and subjected to sophisticated cyberattacks and sabotage. In 2018, Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency, seized a significant portion of Iran’s covert nuclear archives from a warehouse in Tehran. A former Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, went so far as to claim in a recent interview that the very team tasked by the Islamic republic with countering Mossad’s infiltration was led by a Mossad spy.
Iran’s supreme leader must also consider the internal consequences of acquiring nuclear weapons. Much of his power is rooted in his authority to make the final decision about crossing the nuclear threshold. Once that threshold is crossed, he risks shifting power to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, which would almost certainly oversee the nuclear arsenal and launch codes. While many autocratic leaders have recognized the allure of nuclear weapons to enhance their power, they have often hesitated to pursue them, owing to fears of empowering their militaries and undermining their control.
That power shift would probably conclude the Islamic Republic of Iran’s metamorphosis from theocracy to military dictatorship, which will have implications for Mr. Khamenei far beyond his life span. In 1978 the shah of Iran, who had cancer, was reportedly reluctant to rely excessively on his military to crush a national insurrection, for fear it would render his 18-year-old son — to whom he planned to bequeath power — a puppet of the military rather than its master. Mr. Khamenei may confront a similar challenge, concerned that his 55-year-old son, Mojtaba, a Shiite cleric and potential successor, could become a figurehead controlled by a nuclear-armed Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps rather than its commander in chief.
In the end, Mr. Khamenei himself may be the primary barrier to Iran acquiring nuclear weapons, as he grapples with internal power dynamics and external pressures. In a post-Khamenei Iran, military leaders may be less reluctant about pursuing nuclear weapons, observing the cautionary tales of Ukraine, Iraq and Libya — countries that either gave up their nuclear capabilities or refrained from developing them, only to become vulnerable to foreign intervention. By contrast, North Korea, which kept its nuclear arsenal, has managed to secure its isolated regime’s survival. Recently, editorials have begun appearing in Revolutionary Guards news outlets that advocate changing the nuclear doctrine.
Mr. Khamenei now faces a dilemma of his own making. Having ruled since 1989 — the last time he left Iran — he is caught in a high-stakes military, financial and psychological battle against America and Israel at a time when his mental faculties and energy are undoubtedly fading. Hesitating to respond to adversaries’ provocations risks further diminishing his authority, yet a strong response could jeopardize his survival.
As he navigates these challenges, the growing pressure for succession discussions in Tehran will only intensify, raising critical questions about Iran’s direction and stability. In this last chapter of his life, Mr. Khamenei must grapple not only with his legacy but also with the existential fate of the regime he has led for decades.
Karim Sadjadpour is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
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