Khamenei, Ali

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      Death of Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s Leader, Pushes Mideast Conflict Into New Territory

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      Tehran is faced with deciding how, or whether, to retaliate after the death of the leader of Hezbollah, the powerful Lebanese militia and Iranian proxy.Hezbollah, the Lebanese militia, on Saturday confirmed the death of Hassan Nasrallah, its longtime leader, in a strike marking a major escalation of Israel’s campaign against Iran’s proxies in the Middle East.The death of Mr. Nasrallah, after Israeli bombs flattened three apartment buildings shielding what it said were Hezbollah’s underground headquarters, pushed Israel’s war against Iran-backed forces into new territory. Iran has long sought to have the proxies — Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen — serve as the front line in its fight with Israel.But if one of its most important military assets, Hezbollah, has been substantially weakened, it could leave Israel feeling less threatened and put pressure on Iran to decide whether to respond.While fiercely condemning the attack, Iran’s leaders have not taken any direct steps in retaliation, nor have they punished Israel for the killing last month of the Hamas leader, Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran. That inaction has led some analysts to conclude that the Iranians do not want to risk a direct confrontation with Israel.Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, released a statement on Saturday saying, “All the resistance forces in the region stand with and support Hezbollah.”Iranians at an anti-Israeli gathering in support of Hezbollah in Tehran on Saturday.Arash Khamooshi for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      A Decimated Hezbollah Is a Serious Blow for Iran

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      The death of the Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in an airstrike has dramatically weakened a key Iranian deterrent against its archenemy, Israel. Iran has long sought to have the proxies it supports in the region — including Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, and forces in Syria, Yemen and Iraq — serve as the front line in its long-running fight with Israel. But if its most important military asset, Hezbollah, has been decimated, it may have no choice but to respond, experts said Saturday. The decisions it makes will have a significant impact on the next stage of a growing conflict that now threatens to engulf the region.“Iran’s choices really range from ugly to unpalatable,” said Ali Vaez, the director of the Iran Project at the International Crisis Group, a conflict prevention organization.Julien Barnes-Dacey, the Middle East and North Africa program director at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said Israel’s assassination of Mr. Nasrallah significantly raises the risk of a dangerous conflagration in the Middle East, and beyond.“It really is a question of whether Hezbollah has the capacity to launch wide-ranging missile strikes on Israel at this point,” Mr. Barnes-Dacey said. If it does not, “this could now push Iran to make a dash for nuclear weapons because they see that as their only effective form of deterrence left standing.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Iran’s Options for Retaliation Risk Escalating Middle East Crisis

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      The killing of Hamas’s political leader in Tehran was a humiliating security failure for the Iranian government.Most new Iranian presidents have months to settle into the decades-old cadence of gradual nuclear escalation, attacks against adversaries and, episodically, secret talks with the West to relieve sanctions.President Masoud Pezeshkian had 10 hours.That was the elapsed time between his swearing-in and the explosion inside an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps guesthouse, at 2 a.m. in Tehran, that killed Ismail Haniyeh, the longtime political leader of Hamas. Mr. Haniyeh had not only attended the swearing-in, but had also been embraced by the new president and met that day with the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, making the assassination a particularly brazen act.Now Mr. Pezeshkian — along with Ayatollah Khamenei and top military generals — will be immersed in critical choices that may determine whether war breaks out between two of the Mideast’s most potent militaries. He spent his first day in office in national security meetings. The final decision on how to retaliate rests with Mr. Khamenei and on Wednesday he where ordered Iranian forces to strike Israel directly for what appeared to be its role in killing Mr. Haniyeh.But how that retaliation unfolds makes a difference. If Iran launches direct missile attacks, as it attempted for the first time in 45 years in April, the cycle of strike and counterstrike could easily escalate. If Hezbollah, its closest ally in the region, steps up attacks on Israel’s north or the Houthis expand their attacks in the Red Sea, the war could expand to Lebanon, or involve the need for American naval forces to keep the sea lanes open.Mourners for Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’s longtime political leader, in Tehran on Wednesday.Arash Khamooshi for The New York TimesBehind all of those options is perhaps the riskiest choice of all: whether Iran decides to take the final step toward building an actual nuclear weapon. For decades it has walked right up to the line, producing nuclear fuel and in recent years enriching it to near bomb-grade levels. But American intelligence assessments say the country has always stopped short of an actual weapon, a decision Iranian leaders have publicly been reconsidering in recent months.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Iran’s 2024 Presidential Election: What to Know

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      Iran will hold a special election later this month to replace former President Ebrahim Raisi, who died in a helicopter crash in May.Iran’s election for its next president will take place a year early, on June 28, after President Ebrahim Raisi died in a helicopter crash last month. The vote will usher the Islamic republic into new leadership amid domestic discontent, voter apathy and regional turmoil.While the country’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, has the final say on all state matters, the Iranian president sets domestic policy and has some influence over foreign policy.Watching a presidential debate on a screen this month in Tehran.Arash Khamooshi for The New York TimesWhy is this election important?The election gives the Iranian leadership the chance to show it can handle a disaster like the unexpected death of a president without destabilizing the country, even as it grapples with internal protests and tension with the United States and Israel.The election also allows the leadership to remind people that while Iran is a theocracy, it also holds elections for government positions such as president, members of Parliament and councils.That said, who is allowed to run for president is carefully controlled. And if, as expected, one of the more conservative candidates, close to the clerical leadership, wins, the government will most likely claim it as a victory for its brand of politics — despite the sharp constraints placed on the competition.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Crowds for Raisi Show Support for Iranian State, Supreme Leader Says

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      Ayatollah Ali Khamenei pointed to the turnout at memorials for Iran’s president at a time when external critics say popular backing for the Islamic Republic has weakened.Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said on Saturday that the large crowds of mourners who took to the streets of Iranian cities this past week to honor the country’s deceased president, Ebrahim Raisi, were proof of widespread popular support for the Islamic Republic and its system of religious governance.Ayatollah Khamenei had declared five days of mourning after Mr. Raisi, 63, was killed in a helicopter crash along with Iran’s foreign minister, Hossein Amir Abdollahian, and five others last weekend. Video from the Iranian news media in recent days showed large processions in honor of the dead, and crowds packed in to listen outside the University of Tehran on loudspeakers as Mr. Khamenei led the funeral service for Mr. Raisi on Wednesday.“This mourning has proved to the world that the people are loyal to the president of the republic and to all who embody the principles of the Islamic Revolution,” Al Mayadeen, a Lebanese news channel, quoted Ayatollah Khamenei as saying on Saturday of Mr. Raisi, who had been considered a likely successor as supreme leader.“The majestic funeral that Iran witnessed proved that the people are alive,” the ayatollah added, according to Al Mayadeen, which has long reported closely on Iran and Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Lebanese militant group.The Iranian state news agency IRNA also reported sentiments to that effect by Mr. Khamenei, although it did not directly quote him. The ayatollah was speaking at a memorial event for Mr. Raisi and the other victims at the Imam Khomeini Hosseinieh, an important religious site in the capital, Tehran, where Mr. Khamenei regularly holds meetings.Funeral observances for Mr. Raisi and the others began on Tuesday with a procession in Tabriz, the closest large city to the crash site in northwestern Iran. Their bodies were then taken to the holy city of Qom and to Tehran before the funeral.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      With Nuclear Deal Dead, Containing Iran Grows More Fraught

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      The U.S., Europe, Russia and China worked together on a 2015 deal to limit Iran’s nuclear program. The arrangement’s unraveling and the spike in superpower tensions make this a dangerous moment.When Iran agreed to a deal in 2015 that would require it to surrender 97 percent of the uranium it could use to make nuclear bombs, Russia and China worked alongside the United States and Europe to get the pact done.The Russians even took Iran’s nuclear fuel, for a hefty fee, prompting celebratory declarations that President Vladimir V. Putin could cooperate with the West on critical security issues and help constrain a disruptive regime in a volatile region.A lot has changed in the subsequent nine years. China and Russia are now more aligned with Iran’s “Axis of Resistance” to an American-led order, along with the likes of North Korea. When President Biden gathered the leaders of six nations for a video call from the White House on Sunday to plot a common strategy for de-escalating the crisis between Israel and Iran, there was no chance of getting anyone from Beijing or Moscow on the screen.The disappearance of that unified front is one of the many factors that make this moment seems “particularly dangerous,” said Vali Nasr, an Iranian-born professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, “maybe the most dangerous in decades.”But it is hardly the only one.President Donald J. Trump’s decision to pull out of the Obama-era nuclear deal triggered a predictable counterreaction from Tehran, and after a long pause, Iran resumed enriching uranium — some to near-bomb-grade quality. Today it is far closer to producing a bomb than it was when the accord was in effect.Iran has moved forward with its ballistic missile programs, and some of those weapons were used against Israel this weekend.Arash Khamooshi for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Iran’s Strikes on Israel Open a Dangerous New Chapter for Old Rivals

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      Iran has retaliated directly against Israel for the killings of its senior generals in Damascus, Syria, with an onslaught of more than 300 drones and missiles aimed at restoring its credibility and deterrence, officials and analysts say.That represents a moment of great risk, with key questions still to answer, they say. Has Iran’s attack been enough to satisfy its calls for revenge? Or given the relatively paltry results — almost all of the drones and missiles were intercepted by Israel and the United States — will it feel obligated to strike again? And will Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, see the strong performance by his country’s air defenses as a sufficient response? Or will he choose to escalate further with an attack on Iran itself?Now that Iran has attacked Israel as it promised to do, it will want to avoid a broader war, the officials and analysts say, noting that the Iranians targeted only military sites in an apparent effort to avoid civilian casualties and advertised their attack well in advance.“Iran’s government appears to have concluded that the Damascus strike was a strategic inflection point, where failure to retaliate would carry more downsides than benefits,” said Ali Vaez, the Iran director of the International Crisis Group. “But in doing so, the shadow war it has been waging with Israel for years now threatens to turn into a very real and very damaging conflict,” one that could drag in the United States, he said.“The Iranians have for now played their card,” said Sanam Vakil, director of the Middle East and North Africa program at Chatham House. “They made a choice to call Israel’s bluff, and they felt they needed to do so, because they see the last six months as a persistent effort to set them back across the region.”On Sunday, Iranian leaders said the military operation against Israel was over, but warned that they could launch a bigger one depending on Israel’s response.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Many Iranians Boycott Elections, Despite Pleas and Roses

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      Ordinary Iranians, fed up with a faltering economy and the government’s oppressive rules and violent crackdowns on peaceful protests, heeded calls to stay home.Iran held parliamentary elections on Friday, but despite officials’ last-minute attempts to increase voter turnout with pleas on social media and roses at polling stations, many people stayed away from the ballot in an act of protest against the government, according to witnesses, interviews and news reports.In the capital, Tehran, the turnout was estimated at 11 percent, the hard-line parliamentary candidate Ali Akbar Raefipour said in a post on social media, and across the country, turnout was around 40 percent, according to IRNA, the official Iranian news agency — even with polls extending their opening hours to 10 p.m. from 8 p.m.The current speaker of the Parliament, Gen. Mohammad Ghalibaf, a commander of the Revolutionary Guards Corps who is running for re-election on the conservative ticket, took to the social media platform X on Friday to plead with people to call at least 10 others and urge them to vote.“It’s not just winning the elections that matters, increasing participation is also a priority,” General Ghalibaf said in his post.For many ordinary Iranians fed up with a faltering economy — and with the government’s oppressive rules and violent crackdowns on peaceful protests — their demands for change extend far beyond what is offered by the existing political parties, with their reformist and conservative factions.Ahead of the vote, calls for a widespread boycott of the election had gained steam, with prominent activists and dissidents encouraging Iranians to turn the occasion into a protest against the government. The jailed Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi said in a statement that boycotting the vote was a “moral duty.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More