In the early 1990s, Bashar al-Assad was living in London. His days were spent in laboratories, his spare hours in cafés and nightclubs. The ‘doctor’ did not see himself as a political figure, still less as a ruler. He was the president’s second son. At the time, the designated heir was his elder brother, the ‘knight’ Basil, who had been carefully groomed for power in the barracks of the army and the lexicon of the party. Yet the car crash that took Basil’s life on the airport road in 1994 suddenly opened paths no one had anticipated.
Bashar was summoned home from London. He was quickly initiated into the school of succession, adorned with honours, and furnished with a vocabulary suited to his new rank. When the elder Assad died in 2000, the chair did not pass to a vice-president, the ranks did not go to his military commanders, and the offices were not left to his party comrades. The constitution itself was altered to fit Bashar, clearing the way for him to assume the presidency.
In practice, Syria became a hereditary republic—a jumlukiya. This was far more than a technical amendment to the text. It was a decision that changed the course of the state. The enthronement drove a wedge into the regime itself, even as its founding comrades had already begun to drift away. In 2011, protests erupted and were swept into torrents of blood, mounds of skulls, and seas of severed limbs. After more than a decade of war, collapse, fragmentation, and isolation, the younger Assad fled in 2024, bringing to an end a dynasty that had held the ‘republic’ hostage for more than half a century.
Today, Iran stands at a similar turning point. After more than three decades in power, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was killed on 28 February in a joint American-Israeli strike. Days later, the Assembly of Experts announced the appointment of his son and gatekeeper, Mojtaba, as Supreme Leader. Thus, the office passed from father to son within a system whose founding narrative rested on the rebellion of the ‘founding guide’, Khomeini, against dynastic monarchy half a century ago.
The appointment of Khamenei’s son, who lacks religious legitimacy, reflects the balance of power within the regime. The Revolutionary Guard has grown into a formidable military, economic, and political force, and now stands as the most powerful actor in the equation. For this reason, some believe Mojtaba may assume a role akin to the one once associated with Bashar in his early years: the public face of a system steered by the entrenched centres of the old guard.
