Could Iran’s regime fall?

podium before an assembly of sportsmen on September 11th, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, one of the world’s longest-reigning leaders, sounded surprisingly perky. Defying reports of his death, the 83-year-old celebrated the pious female athletes who had been competing abroad, shrouded in veils. One, he enthused, had refused to shake the hand of “a foreign man”. A victorious wrestler had prostrated himself before God, reciting the names of the imams deemed holy by Shia Muslims. The athletes, he said, had scored a “tremendous victory” (irrespective of trophies) against Western efforts to “export their culture and prevail over ours”.The supreme guide had other reasons to feel jovial. With an eye to his succession, he had purged his regime of the reformists threatening to cast doubt on the Islamic Republic. A year earlier he had replaced President Hassan Rouhani, who earned a doctorate from a Scottish university, with , a little-travelled, blinkered yes-man. He had fended off Western efforts to curb Iran’s nuclear plans. Despite Western economic sanctions, Iran’s state coffers were being refilled with oil cash. And he had launched a new chastity drive bent on restoring the moral fibre of the .