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Iran's next Supreme Leader is anybody's guess at this point, but traders at Kalshi give Alireza Arafi a near 25% chance.
Arafi is described as a firebrand Iranian cleric and politician who has served as a member of the Guardian Council since 2019, and a member of the Assembly of Experts since 2022.
"He's been marinating in Khomeinist ideology his entire career. Khomeinism is a threat to U.S. interests," Jason Brodsky, policy director of United Against Nuclear Iran, told Fox News Digital.
According to a UANI report, Arafi has long been agitating against the U.S. and Israel. "America will take its wish for Iran to abandon production of military hardware to the grave," he is quoted as saying, and in a 2019 Friday prayer sermon he announced, "We will stay with our imam and leader to the end, when we humiliate [global] arrogance. Together with the Sayyed of the resistance, we say: Oh great leader of the world of Islam, we will be with you until the end, when the arrogant people in the world are defeated, and Israel is erased."
Brodsky continued, "The fact that Iran’s system elevated Alireza Arafi to membership on the interim leadership council is a signal that he could be a leading candidate to replace Ali Khamenei as supreme leader.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who assembled theocratic power in Iran over the decades as its top leader and sought to turn it into a regional powerhouse, bringing it into confrontation with Israel and the United States over its nuclear program while crushing democracy protests, has been killed in U.S. and Israeli strikes. He was 86.
Iranian state media reported the death early Sunday, after a major attack launched by Israel and the United States.
- T.C. Jackson, Gambling911.com
