Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei during a meeting in Tehran on January 17. Photo / Khamenei.ir via AFP
The United States is sending an “armada” to the Middle East.
The USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier and its strike group are due to arrive in the Arabian Sea in the coming days.
American fighter jets usually based in Britain have landed in Jordan.
And anti-missile defence systems are already in the Gulf.
None of this proves US President Donald Trump is preparing for war with the Islamic Republic, but it is exactly what he would do if he were.
And while we are not privy to his specific battle plans, the similarities with last year’s build-up off Venezuela are impossible to ignore.
Which raises the question: could Trump be planning a re-run of the kidnapping of Nicolas Maduro, a decapitation operation in which Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is killed or kidnapped, but the rest of the Iranian regime left in place? And assuming US forces could pull it off, what would be the result?
When a Venezuelan president dies, falls ill, or is otherwise incapacitated (such as being captured by Delta Force), the vice-president takes over.
So American planners knew that Delcy Rodriguez would succeed Maduro and likely made contact in advance to ensure her compliance.
It seems improbable that America would launch an operation to remove Khamenei without having once again identified a favoured successor in advance.
And if they are following the Venezuelan model, that rules out trying to install an exiled opposition leader, like Reza Pahlavi, the crown prince who styles himself as a national figurehead in waiting.
Nor will the Americans want rule by religious clerics, dictated by the Islamic Republic’s current constitution, to continue.
Some have suggested Washington would favour a pragmatic strongman, like Mohammed Bagher Ghalibaf, the conservative speaker of parliament, a former mayor of Tehran, and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commander.
The result, theorise some, could be a corrupt military dictatorship prepared to do deals with Trump provided its own grip on power and wealth is not undermined.
That would be a nightmare for those Iranians who bravely turned out on the streets this month, but in keeping with the outcome of the Venezuela intervention.
This has appeared to work in Caracas, where Rodriguez, as vice-president, was standing by and primed to take over.
Iran, however, is a very different proposition.
If America does not want another ayatollah, it cannot simply remove Khamenei and allow the constitutional succession to run its course as it did in Venezuela.
And an attempt to supplant both the Supreme Leader and the theocratic structure beneath him may well be bitterly and violently opposed.
Chaos could ensue. A civil war – and a catastrophe for the Iranian people – is not unimaginable.
Simply put, if the US is unwilling to occupy Iran to enforce its will, the Islamic Republic’s institutions are unlikely to be brought to heel.
Instead, they might simply choose Khamenei’s replacement irrespective of Washington’s wishes.
According to the Islamic Republic’s Constitution, a new supreme leader must be chosen by the Assembly of Experts, a body of 88 clerics that is charged with monitoring the Supreme Leader’s performance and removing him if he is deemed incapable of performing his duties.
Members of the Assembly are elected by the public every eight years, but all candidates must be clerics and vetted in advance by the Guardian Council, a 12-man body of lawyers and clerics – half appointed by the chief justice, half by the Supreme Leader himself.
As a result, the Assembly of Experts is stacked with Khamenei-loyalist conservatives who are unlikely to choose anyone who would radically change his policies.
So if Khamenei is removed by Delta Force and America fails to engineer his replacement, or if old age strikes down the 86-year-old, who might take his place?
A supreme leader has to be a highly accomplished religious scholar with deep knowledge of Islamic law, although the rules can be bent (Khamenei himself, critics say, did not have the proper clerical credentials to call himself an Ayatollah when he became Supreme Leader).
IranWire, an independent Iranian news service based outside the country, recently shortlisted five politically powerful clerics with both the credentials and the connections to succeed: Alireza Arafi, Hassan Ameli, Mohammad Reza Modarresi Yazdi, Ahmad Hosseini Khorasani, and Mohammad Mehdi Mirbagheri.
Some are considered more dogmatic than others, but all are regime loyalists. And even if a successor were to change Khamenei’s policies, it might not be in a way Trump would like.
Mirbagheri, for example, has been linked to a faction of insiders who believe the ayatollah should stop procrastinating about building a nuclear bomb and just do it.
Other names have also been mentioned. Ali Asghar Hejazi, Khamenei’s deputy chief of staff and a former intelligence chief, already wields immense power across the Government and may be well placed to seize control when his boss goes.
Mojtaba Khamenei, the Supreme Leader’s son, is strongly favoured as successor by elements within the IRGC. His scholarly credentials are thin, and the Iranian Revolution’s suspicion of kings counts against a hereditary succession.
It might not be any of these clerics, however.
While the Assembly of Experts deliberates, the supreme leader’s role is held by a three-man committee made up of the president, chief of the judiciary, and one of the six clerics from the Guardian Council.
Since there is no deadline for the Guardian Council to make a decision, that triumvirate could theoretically rule indefinitely. It would make for a curious mix.
President Masoud Pezeshkian is thought of as a relatively moderate pragmatist who would ditch the nuclear programme and ease up on domestic suppression in an instant if it meant sanctions relief.
The Chief Justice, Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Eje’i, is a hardliner unafraid of issuing death sentences.
And the Guardian Council clerics – which include Arafi, Yazdi and Khorasani – are all directly appointed by Khamenei and can be relied on to share his hardline views on both bombing Israel and shooting protesters.
With so many possible successors and so many people involved in the selection process, it is almost impossible to have as much certainty about the outcome as there was in Venezuela.
In fact, the only thing that does seem clear is that whatever Trump does next in Iran, it is likely to have a very different outcome to his adventure in the Caribbean.
And it may unleash forces he has even less control over.
Sign up to Herald Premium Editor’s Picks, delivered straight to your inbox every Friday. Editor-in-Chief Murray Kirkness picks the week’s best features, interviews and investigations. Sign up for Herald Premium here.