“Speculation about Khamenei’s longevity is rampant in the senior levels of government and the military. ‘The struggle to succeed him has already begun,’ my host said. But Khamenei has spent decades placing loyalists throughout the country’s major institutions, building a system that serves and protects him. ‘Khamenei is like the sun, and the solar system orbits around him,’ he told me. ‘This is my worry: What happens when you take the sun out of the solar system? Chaos.'” The New Yorker’s always excellent Dexter Filkins on The Twilight of the Iranian Revolution.