Jim’s excellent post on Iran’s new “supreme leader,” Mojtaba Khamenei — as Pete Townshend might say, “Meet the new boss, son of the old boss” — explains teachings by the regime’s founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, about the credentials that were supposedly mandatory to lead the Shiite sharia state. In such a regime, what matters is academic mastery of Islamic doctrine, not heredity.

This has always been ironic: Shia Islam developed out of a dispute over leadership of the caliphate after the death of Mohammed in 632; there being no succession plan, Shiites believed leadership should stay within Mohammed’s family (his cousin

© National Review