When Republics Re-invent Kings
Today, power in the Islamic Republic passed from a father to his son. The strange part is that this republic was built on rejecting exactly that. But the strangest part is that the loudest voice against this inheritance belongs to the son of the king that same revolution overthrew. This is not just an Iranian crisis — it is a question about human nature itself.
Today, Monday, March 9, 2026, Iran’s Assembly of Experts announced the appointment of Mojtaba Khamenei as the new Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic, replacing his father Ali Khamenei, who was killed on February 28 in a series of airstrikes that targeted Tehran.1
Only ten days passed between the killing of the father and the son taking the same position. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps had been putting strong pressure on members of the Assembly of Experts to vote for Mojtaba. Eight members announced they would not attend the session in protest against what they called “heavy pressure.”2
Immediately, international reactions followed — and they revealed something deeper than simple political commentary: each party wanted to choose the new Supreme Leader themselves.
Trump said that Mojtaba’s appointment was “unacceptable,” and that he had been thinking of other candidates — “but most of them are dead” from the strikes.3 He added at another point that any Supreme Leader without Washington’s approval “won’t last long.” Trump had been talking about completely changing the Iranian system, but this now appears to have been an exaggeration that is not currently possible. Israel’s Defense Minister stated clearly that Israel would consider any successor, whoever it may be, a legitimate target for assassination.4 The European Union spoke of “an open road toward a different Iran.”5 And the Iranian street itself was divided: in Isfahan, Shiraz, and Kermanshah, a small number celebrated here and there, while the majority of the public expressed grief.6
The whole picture contains a striking contradiction: the Islamic Republic, which was built in 1979 on rejecting hereditary monarchy and removing the Shah, is today handing power from father to son. Ali Khamenei himself was known to oppose appointing his son as his successor, fearing it would bring back to Iran the very form of monarchy that his revolution had destroyed.7
What makes this even more ironic is that the man who is loudest in rejecting this inheritance is Reza Pahlavi — the son of the last Shah who was removed by that very revolution.8
II. The Contradiction That Says Everything
Reza Pahlavi has been living in the United States for forty-five years. He stood in front of cameras in Paris and then on Fox News to declare that the Islamic Republic is “collapsing,” that Iranians are “taking their country back,” and that any successor chosen by the current system “will lack legitimacy.”9 He then adds with confidence that he himself is “the right person” to lead the transitional period.10
Let us look at this picture clearly: a king’s son rejecting the succession of a Supreme Leader’s son. Both men base their political presence on family name rather than election, and on inherited identity rather than a political project they built themselves. Pahlavi rejects religious inheritance and offers himself as an alternative — through inheritance.
There is a deep irony in the fact that two men stand at the center of the Iranian scene facing each other: one inherits religious authority, the other inherits a royal claim. Both represent inheritance, and both refuse to call it by that name.
When Pahlavi is asked if he wants to be king, he answers carefully: “I am not running for a position — I am a bridge for the transitional period.” But a bridge, by definition, is nothing more than a road between two sides. The real question is who built the bridge, and why we are being asked to cross it.
III. Is Inheritance Even an Exception?
Before we judge, we need to ask a more honest question: is political inheritance an unusual phenomenon in modern history, or are we discovering that it is the constant rule that never really goes away? Let us look at three different patterns of this phenomenon.
Pattern One: The Son Inherits the Father’s Name
In the United States, George W. Bush became president of the world’s largest democracy in 2001, only eight years after his father George H.W. Bush held the same office.11 This was not an electoral coincidence — it was a deliberate investment in the family name, its network, and its resources. In North Korea, a country that calls itself the “Democratic People’s Republic,” power passed from Kim Il-sung to his son Kim Jong-il and then to his grandson Kim Jong-un — three consecutive generations ruling the “Republic.”12 In the Philippines, Ferdinand Marcos Jr. won the presidency in 2022, after his father the dictator had spent decades in documented corruption.13 And in Syria, power passed from Hafez al-Assad to his son Bashar — not in a kingdom, but in a republic with a written constitution.
Pattern Two: A Person Inherits Power From Themselves
In Russia, when Putin’s second presidential term was approaching its end in 2008, he formally handed the presidency to Dmitry Medvedev, who immediately appointed Putin as Prime Minister. Four years later, Putin returned to the same chair.14 The constitution did not change, but its interpretation did. In China, the government amended its constitution in 2018 to remove the limit of two presidential terms, opening the door for Xi Jinping to remain in power indefinitely.15
Pattern Three: The System Is Inherited, Not the Name
This pattern is the most dangerous because it is the hardest to identify. In America, it was not just the Bush family — there was an entire current with it: the neoconservatives, the military-industrial complex, and international alliances. When power changes hands in Washington, the same technical, advisory, and industrial positions often pass between the same families, the same law firms, and the same lobbying companies — regardless of which party wins.16 This is inheritance without names, which is why it carries a legitimacy that open inheritance does not. It is also worth noting that only two parties take turns holding the White House under America’s electoral system, and American democracy is essentially the transfer of power between the Republican and Democratic parties alone.
IV. Why Does Inheritance Always Come Back?
When we look at all these patterns together, we should stop at a harder question: why do republics keep re-producing kings, even when they openly say they hate them?
The easy answer is political hypocrisy. But hypocrisy alone is not enough to explain a phenomenon this widespread and this repeated across cultures, ideologies, and continents.
There is a deeper explanation that starts with this observation: the family is the oldest social unit in human history. It existed before the state, before democracy, before the republic, and before the constitution. When a person faces a serious threat, their circle of trust shrinks and returns to what is closest: the family line they know, the name they trust.17
When the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps pushed to install Mojtaba Khamenei, it was not carrying out a plot against republican principles. It was doing what every institution under pressure does in a moment of danger: looking for continuity in the nearest face and the most trusted name. The name was known. The face was available.
This does not justify inheritance or make it right. But it makes it understandable. The difference between those two things is a difference that many political commentators miss, because they tend to see power as a pure ideological choice, separate from deeper instincts that existed long before any ideology.
Republics do not fail when they produce kings. They fail when they believe they can cancel human nature with a constitutional decision. Inheritance is not a betrayal of principle — it is a revelation of its limits.
Perhaps the most thought-provoking case in this regard is Iran itself: the 1979 revolution did not just remove the Shah — it claimed to remove the very idea of a king. Then it built the “Rule of the Jurist” system, which gives the Supreme Leader powers that often exceed what the Shah had. And today, that guardianship is being passed from father to son. The form changed. The substance stayed.
The same pattern appears in many historical examples: the French Revolution produced Napoleon and then his family’s monarchy. The Mexican Revolution produced the “Institutional Revolutionary Party” that ruled for seventy years. The Russian Revolution produced Stalin. Revolutions do not seem to eliminate inheritance — they just rename who inherits.
V. Two Questions Without Answers
At this point in the article, we face a choice: either we offer a comfortable conclusion, or we admit that the question is bigger than any conclusion. We choose the second.
First question: if inheritance returns every time regardless of ideology, is the problem with the ruler or with the people who accept them? And if it is with the people — is that because they are comfortable with the familiar, or because they are governed by choices that others make and then present to them as their own free will?
Second question: what is the real difference between inheriting a name and inheriting a system? Trump did not inherit power from his father, but the class that makes decisions in Washington continues regardless of who is elected. The Philippines elected the dictator’s son in a free election. Is that inheritance or choice? And when does a choice become inheritance wearing the costume of the people’s will?
Mojtaba Khamenei sits today in his father’s position. Reza Pahlavi demands the right to lead a “democratic transition” that no one elected him to lead. And the world argues about who will choose the next Supreme Leader — not about whether humans are actually capable of choosing what they have not already been led to want.
We do not have an answer. But the question itself — when asked this way — is the only thing that remains when all the slogans fall away.
Notes and Sources
(1) Iran’s Assembly of Experts announces Mojtaba Khamenei as Supreme Leader. Tasnim and IRNA, March 9, 2026. NBC News: “Mojtaba Khamenei named Iran’s new supreme leader, state media report.”
(2) Reports on Revolutionary Guard pressure and boycott of eight Assembly members. Iran International, March 2026.
(3) Trump statement to Axios and ABC News: “The attack was so successful it knocked out most of the candidates. Second or third place is dead.” TIME Magazine, March 2026.
(4) Statement by Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz, March 4, 2026. NBC News / Wikipedia: 2026 Iranian Supreme Leader election.
(5) Statement by Kaja Kallas, EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs. Wikipedia: Assassination of Ali Khamenei.
(6) Reports on divided Iranian public response across several cities. Wikipedia: Assassination of Ali Khamenei.
(7) Ali Khamenei’s personal opposition to appointing his son as successor. TIME Magazine / CBC News, March 2026.
(8) Reza Pahlavi, son of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, removed in the 1979 revolution. CBS News / 60 Minutes interview.
(9) Reza Pahlavi statements. Tribune / Reuters, March 2026.
(10) Newsweek: “Who could lead Iran after Khamenei’s death?” / CBS News 60 Minutes transcript.
(11) George H.W. Bush: US President 1989–1993. George W. Bush: US President 2001–2009.
(12) Kim Il-sung (1948–1994), Kim Jong-il (1994–2011), Kim Jong-un (2011–present). Wikipedia.
(13) Ferdinand Marcos Jr. wins Philippine presidential election, 2022. The Guardian, May 2022.
(14) Dmitry Medvedev: President of Russia 2008–2012. Wikipedia.
(15) China’s 2018 constitutional amendment. BBC News, March 2018.
(16) The Revolving Door Project / Harvard Kennedy School of Government.
(17) For a deeper look at the family as the primary unit of trust and its relationship to political power, see: Francis Fukuyama, “The Origins of Political Order,” 2011. For the philosophy of primary human experience and its relationship to ideological structures, see our earlier article on Walter Stace: Walter Stace | The Philosopher Who Crossed All Borders.
