New Reality Seeds

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Try this one. The Ayatollah Khomeini has a fatal heart attack on November 1st 1979. This not only canceled the attack on the US embassy but more importantly it has thrown the Clerical faction into chaos as they struggle to choose a successor.

Surely it's clearly Mohammad Beheshti, the actual second in command and quite popular with everybody except the Marxists.

It's assumed that either Centrum or more likely the Cabal killed Khomeini. But what made them risk it?

Between said Marxists, the recently disbanded but still active State Security Bureau, and the intelligence services of Iraq, Israel and the United States, I don't see why anybody would assume that. There's no shortage of people who wanted him dead and might have resources to try. Note that the Iranian Marxists [did] successfully blow up Beheshti (and 4 cabinet ministers and a dozen other leaders of the Iranian Revolution) in 1981.