A member of the talkislam community asked why the description seyyed, “of the line of the Imam”, is important in Iranian religio-politics, since there are literally millions of seyyeds. It is not just the relationship, but the degree of relationship. You see, Islam is a meritocracy. But genetics are a recognized part of inherited talent. Some people are just better at god. The deference to the line of the Imam is both symbolic and practical, an attempt to capture an inherited trait.
The Sufi in particular, since we are mystics, believe some humans can be born open-channel to the Divine Beloved, with no signal attenuation or noise.
The symbolic part can be manipulated though….in the days before the Iranian elections state radio and tv made repeated references to Khamenei as “the Ali of the Age”, and now we see the result of that…a lot of the manouvering in Iran is about Khamenei’s attempts to secure the succession for his son Mojtaba.