--- title: "Who Will Replace Iran's Supreme Leader? The Race to Succeed Khamenei" description: "Sixty seconds. That was all the time it took for Israel to execute one of the most complex missions in recent history. When it ended, eight members of Iran's top leadership lay dead, including the nation's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Hosseini Khamenei. The man who had ruled the Islamic Republic for 36 years was gone in a single minute.\n\nBut the strike itself was the tip of something much larger. According to the New York Times, the operation was the culmination of decades of painstaking intelligence work by Israel's secret service, accelerated over the preceding six months with the help of the CIA and other American agencies. The CIA had been tracking Khamenei's movements for months, mapping his patterns and locations. When analysts learned he would be at a leadership compound in the heart of Tehran for a meeting, they passed the intelligence to Israel. Washington and Israel moved up the timing of their initial strikes, which had been intended for the cover of darkness, and then needed only a minute to eliminate a man who had been a thorn in their side for a generation.\n\nThe killing was a showcase of American and Israeli intelligence reach. Yet even some of its admirers in the espionage world saw a blunder. Critics described it as a strategic error that could alienate potential supporters inside Iran or open the door to someone even more radical. The deeper problem, as one veteran analyst put it, is that decapitation rarely delivers what its planners promise: leaders fall, and other leaders rise to take their place.\n\nWith the Ayatollah dead, the urgent question is no longer whether Iran's regime was wounded, but who will inherit it. The answer will shape whether the Islamic Republic negotiates an exit from its crisis, hardens into something more dangerous, or collapses altogether.\n\n## Key Takeaways\n\n- Israel and the United States killed Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in a 60-second strike that capped decades of intelligence work, leaving a contested succession in the middle of an active war.\n- Under Iran's constitution, power has passed temporarily to an interim leadership council of President Masoud Pezeshkian, judiciary chief Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Eje'i, and senior cleric Alireza Arafi until a permanent successor is named.\n- The Assembly of Experts, the 88-member clerical body that selects the Supreme Leader, is difficult to convene safely during wartime because assembling its members would create an obvious target.\n- A CIA assessment concluded a hardliner from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps could take over, with former Guards commander Ali Larijani — already running much of Iran's day-to-day governance — at the center of speculation.\n- Candidates range from dynastic figures like Mojtaba Khamenei and Hassan Khomeini, to the reformist Hassan Rouhani, to the ultra-conservative Ayatollah Mohammed Mehdi Mirbagheri, each carrying distinct liabilities.\n- A power-sharing arrangement between the Larijani brothers — cleric Sadiq supplying religious legitimacy and Ali supplying the security and diplomatic muscle — is one plausible outcome.\n- Whoever takes the role inherits an unenviable job: leading a country at war, facing internal unrest, and carrying a target on his back, with survival likely hinging on some kind of deal with Washington.\n\n## A Sixty-Second Strike Decades in the Making\n\nThe mission that killed Khamenei took a minute, but it rested on years of groundwork. Israeli intelligence had been building toward this for decades, and the effort intensified sharply in the half-year before the strike, joined by the CIA and other American agencies. Tracking a head of state who knows he is hunted is extraordinarily difficult, yet the agencies pieced together enough of Khamenei's habits and whereabouts to act on a single window of opportunity.\n\nThat window was a meeting at a leadership compound in central Tehran. Once the CIA confirmed Khamenei would be there, the calculus changed. The strikes had been scheduled to launch in darkness, but the chance to take out the Supreme Leader in one stroke was too valuable to delay. Israel and Washington advanced their timeline, and in roughly the time it takes to read this paragraph aloud, the architecture of Iranian power lost its keystone.\n\nFor Israel, the operation closed a chapter that had been open for decades. For the region, it opened a far more uncertain one.\n\n## \"The Leaders Are Always Replaced\"\n\nNot everyone in the intelligence community celebrated. Even as the strike demonstrated formidable operational skill, seasoned veterans questioned its wisdom, warning that killing Khamenei could backfire by radicalizing the system it was meant to weaken.\n\nIsraeli analyst Yossi Melman gave the most pointed critique. \"The problem is that Israel is in love with assassinations,\" he told the Guardian, \"and we never learn that it is not the solution. We have killed all the leaders of Hamas. They are still there. It's the same with Hezbollah. The leaders are always replaced.\"\n\nThat observation frames the entire succession question. Removing one man does not dismantle an institution that has spent more than four decades preparing to outlive any single leader. The Islamic Republic was constructed with continuity in mind, and the death of its figurehead triggers a process that the regime has long anticipated, even if it never expected it to arrive quite like this. The real test is not the funeral, but who walks into the office next — and whether the system that produces him survives the war raging around it.\n\n## How Iran Replaces a Supreme Leader\n\nIran's constitution provides a clear procedure for exactly this scenario. When the Supreme Leader cannot perform his functions, authority transfers to an interim leadership council. That is precisely what happened after Khamenei's death on Saturday. The council is currently composed of three figures: President Masoud Pezeshkian, judiciary chief Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Eje'i, and a senior cleric from the Guardian Council, Alireza Arafi. They hold the reins until a permanent successor is chosen — a process that could stretch on for some time.\n\nChoosing that successor formally falls to the Assembly of Experts, an 88-member clerical body elected by the public every eight years. In ordinary times, the Assembly deliberates, vets candidates against the constitution's requirements, and installs the next leader. These are not ordinary times. With the country at war, simply gathering the Assembly's members in one place is fraught, because a concentration of Iran's senior clerics would present an obvious and tempting target for Washington and Jerusalem. The mechanism for succession exists, but the war has made executing it dangerous in the most literal sense.\n\nEven so, the names in contention matter. A new Supreme Leader will eventually be selected, and the shape of Iran's future depends heavily on which faction wins.\n\n## The Case for an IRGC Hardliner\n\nBefore Khamenei's death, the CIA had reportedly reached a conclusion about what might follow it. According to Reuters, the agency assessed that if the Supreme Leader were assassinated, his most likely replacement would be a hardline figure from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the elite armed force that operates parallel to Iran's regular army but answers directly to the Supreme Leader himself.\n\nFrom Tehran's vantage point, that logic holds. The killing of a leader who ruled for 36 years is an existential shock, and elevating a hardliner would be the clearest signal that the regime intends to fight on. Hardliners populate every branch of Iran's government, but the IRGC is distinct: its founding doctrine is the protection of the Islamic revolution, and its members are prepared to go to extreme lengths to defend it. As Kasra Aarabi, an expert on the IRGC, wrote in Engelsberg Ideas, the Guard Corps sees the United States as the embodiment of evil and views the Islamic Republic's survival as inseparable from America's defeat.\n\nBy that reading, a Guards hardliner is the most logical choice. But logic and process are two different things — and the body that must ratify any choice is the one Iran can least afford to convene right now.\n\n## Mojtaba Khamenei and the Problem of His Name\n\nAmong individual contenders, the first name that surfaces is Mojtaba Khamenei, widely regarded as the most influential of the late Supreme Leader's sons. A mid-ranking cleric believed to control vast financial assets and to wield significant power behind the scenes, he first rose to national prominence in 2009. According to the Atlantic Council, he orchestrated the electoral fraud that secured a second term for then-President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and managed the state's crackdown on the post-election protests known as the Green Movement.\n\nDuring that unrest, Mojtaba took control of the basiji street militias and unleashed a wave of repression not unlike the violence seen during the January 2026 protests. The Guardian reported that those moves alienated many of the country's senior clerics, conservative politicians, and Revolutionary Guard generals. One politician close to the security apparatus said officials were unwilling to challenge the Khameneis openly, fearing it would weaken the nation.\n\nHis deepest liability, though, is not an old feud. It is his surname. As Professor Muhammad Sahimi notes, one of the chief grievances against the Pahlavi dynasty was nepotism, and Iranians hoped the 1979 revolution would eliminate it. Installing Mojtaba — a mid-level cleric who has never earned the title of Ayatollah — risks reviving those grievances among an already restless population. That, to put it mildly, is a substantial obstacle.\n\n## Hassan Khomeini: A \"Relative\" Moderate\n\nThe second dynastic option, Hassan Khomeini, would face the same nepotism charge. Reuters has described him as the most visible of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's 15 grandchildren — the grandson of the founding figure who led post-revolutionary Iran, a useful distinction for anyone who confuses the Khomeinis with the Khameneis. Hassan is regarded as a relative moderate within Iran's clerical establishment, with \"relative\" doing considerable work in that sentence. According to Reuters, he maintains close ties to reformists, including former presidents Mohammed Khatami and Hassan Rouhani, both of whom pursued engagement with the West while in office.\n\nKhomeini has a track record of urging reform and has occasionally voiced dissent, including demands for accountability over the death of Mahsa Amini, the young Iranian woman who died in 2022 after being detained by morality police. Such stances have led some politicians in Tehran to see him as a counterweight to the hardliners who gained ground under Khamenei — notably the late Supreme Leader's son, Mojtaba.\n\nYet Hassan has never served in government. His role has been symbolic: custodian of his grandfather's mausoleum in southern Tehran. That lack of administrative experience could weigh heavily at a moment when Iran needs steady, seasoned leadership. And like Mojtaba, he has never been granted the title of Ayatollah — a deficiency his detractors will not let pass unnoticed.\n\n## Hassan Rouhani and the Reformist Off-Ramp\n\nSomeone who does possess leadership experience is Khomeini's ally, former president Hassan Rouhani. A relative moderate, Rouhani led Iran from 2013 to 2021 and negotiated the landmark nuclear agreement with the Obama administration — the deal that President Trump scrapped during his first term. Rouhani remained on the Assembly of Experts until 2024, when he said he had been disqualified from running for reelection, a move he condemned as an infringement on Iranians' right to political participation.\n\nThat disqualification complicates his prospects. It raises the question of whether the regime would even entertain him as a candidate for Supreme Leader, especially since the Guardian Council, which vets candidates, has already barred him from the very Assembly that would elect the next leader. The body that controls the door has effectively closed it.\n\nAnd yet Rouhani's profile is precisely what a cornered regime might want. His administrative depth, his diplomatic credentials, and his record of dealing with the West could make him attractive to a leadership desperate for someone capable of negotiating an off-ramp from the crisis with Washington. In a war the Islamic Republic cannot win outright, a proven negotiator becomes an asset — if the hardliners can be persuaded to tolerate one.\n\n## Mirbagheri: Ideological Purity Over Pragmatism\n\nAt the opposite end of the spectrum stands Ayatollah Mohammed Mehdi Mirbagheri, a senior cleric on the Assembly of Experts who is popular with hardliners. His admirers included the late Ayatollah Mohammad Taghi Mesbah Yazdi, who once wrote that Iran should not deny itself the right to produce \"special weapons\" — a thinly veiled reference to nuclear arms.\n\nMirbagheri's theology aligns with ultra-conservative interpretations of Islamic law, and he heads the Islamic Cultural Center in Qom, the foremost institution for Islamic teaching in Iran. His elevation would send an unmistakable message: a regime that prizes ideological purity over pragmatism. Such a choice would likely lock in Iran's confrontational posture toward the West for the foreseeable future, foreclosing the kind of diplomatic flexibility a figure like Rouhani might offer.\n\nMirbagheri represents the path of defiance — the bet that doubling down on revolutionary principle, rather than compromising with adversaries, is the surest route to the regime's survival.\n\n## The Council Clerics: Arafi and Mohseni-Eje'i\n\nThe interim council deserves close attention, because its members may govern Iran for an extended stretch — and that is the perfect platform from which to build credentials and convince both the Assembly of Experts and the Iranian public that one deserves the top job permanently.\n\nPresident Masoud Pezeshkian, though among the country's most powerful figures, is disqualified from the supreme post for a simple reason: he is not a cleric. That leaves the council's two clerics, Ayatollah Ali Reza Arafi and Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Eje'i.\n\nArafi is the consummate insider. According to the Middle East Institute, his entire career has been built on appointments entrusted to him by Khamenei. From 2008 to 2018 he led Al-Mustafa International University, founded by Khamenei to export the regime's ideology abroad. A rapid succession of posts followed: head of all national seminaries in 2016, a handpicked seat on the Guardian Council in 2019, and membership in the Assembly of Experts in 2022. The Indian outlet The Week has called him a tech-savvy, second-generation hardliner with the right family connections. More than any other candidate, his appointment would signal pure continuity with Khamenei's regime.\n\nMohseni-Eje'i is more complicated. He studied at the Haqqani School in Qom, a seminary that has produced many of Iran's leading hardline clerics, and one of his teachers was Mesbah Yazdi — the same ultra-conservative theologian who mentored Mirbagheri. His career has been defined by a willingness to use violence in defense of the regime. Yet according to Iran International, since becoming chief justice in 2021 he has gradually distanced himself from Tehran's ultra-hardliners and cultivated a relatively cooperative relationship with President Pezeshkian's moderate administration — drawing sharp criticism from those who accuse him of going soft. His appointment would suggest a regime willing to be pragmatic to ensure its own survival.\n\n## The Larijani Brothers: A De Facto Leader and His Clerical Twin\n\nEven with all these contenders, the person who ends up wielding the most power in Iran could be a dark horse — and the leading dark horse is Ali Larijani. According to the CIA assessment cited earlier, the best-positioned successor to Khamenei could be Larijani, a former Revolutionary Guards commander and the current head of the Supreme National Security Council.\n\nThe New York Times reports that Larijani has effectively been running Iran since the January protests. He oversaw the crushing of demonstrators demanding the end of Islamic rule, using lethal force. He managed the suppression of dissent, including the arrest of prominent reformist politicians; he liaised with powerful allies like Russia and regional players like Qatar and Oman; and he supervised nuclear negotiations with Washington. The Times further reported that he was drawing up plans to manage Iran through a potential war with the United States. His expanding portfolio had effectively sidelined President Pezeshkian.\n\nHe has also been among the most visible figures since the strikes began. Hours after Khamenei was confirmed dead, Larijani appeared on Iranian state television with a fiery vow: \"We will burn their hearts. We will make the shameless Americans regret their actions.\" Though he is not a member of the interim council, the powers he already commands make him something close to a de facto Supreme Leader.\n\nBut \"de facto\" is likely where it stops, because Larijani is not a cleric — and the constitution reserves the supreme post for clerics. The document has been amended before to accommodate political reality, yet stripping out the clerical requirement would be a bridge too far for a regime whose entire legitimacy rests on the principle of clerical rule.\n\nThat is where his brother enters. Sadiq Larijani is a cleric with extensive governing experience, currently chairman of the Expediency Discernment Council and a former chief justice. A close aide to Khamenei, he has long been viewed as a potential successor. According to United Against Nuclear Iran, however, corruption allegations trailing the end of his judicial career, along with the broader marginalization of the Larijani dynasty, have diminished his standing.\n\nEven so, that dynasty's supposed eclipse has not stopped one brother from rising to one of the most powerful positions in the country — which means Sadiq's elevation to Supreme Leader is not beyond the realm of possibility. Such an outcome would knit the brothers' divergent strengths together: Sadiq would supply the clerical legitimacy, while Ali would furnish the security connections, the pragmatic diplomatic experience, and the relationships with Russia and China that Tehran badly needs as it confronts Washington and Jerusalem. In essence, it would formalize what has been happening since January, when Ali Larijani began effectively running the country.\n\n## An Open Question of Survival\n\nAll of this remains prediction. Despite the temptation to read the IRGC's mind, no one yet knows who will emerge victorious in the race to become the next Supreme Leader. It could be one of the men profiled here, or it could be someone not yet on anyone's radar. Iran is in flux. With thousands dead from the January protests and the country reeling from American and Israeli strikes, it is genuinely uncertain whether the regime survives this crisis at all.\n\nWhoever inherits the mantle faces an unenviable task. He must lead a country through war with Israel and the United States while wearing a target on his back. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has insisted this is not a regime-change war — a claim complicated by the fact that the operation killed the man running the regime. President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, for their part, clearly want regime change; in announcing the strikes, they urged the Iranian people to seize control of their government. If that remains the goal, then whoever becomes Supreme Leader could find himself in American crosshairs sooner rather than later.\n\nThere is also the possibility that Iranians heed the call to topple the government themselves. Despite Tehran's efforts to suppress public celebration of Khamenei's death, reports emerged from multiple cities of people partying in the streets. Sources told Iran International that residents were shouting in celebration. Farzad, a Tehran resident, described whistling and the honking of motorcycles and cars filling the air. \"It just erupted all at once,\" he said. This was Tehran, where the state's capacity to monitor and surveil is strongest. If people will celebrate that openly in the capital, the scenes in cities with weaker government control can only be imagined.\n\n## What the Crisis Means for the Regime's Grip\n\nPublic jubilation over Khamenei's death is not, by itself, a death sentence for the Islamic Republic. As Rockford Weitz, a professor at Tufts University's Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, observed, roughly 40 percent of the nation still supports the regime. Mourners turned out by the thousands — not only in Tehran but in Shiraz, Yasuj, and Lorestan — to grieve the Ayatollah. Seizing on those numbers, the government declared 40 days of mourning, a measure analysts at the Open Magazine called a \"funeral trap\": a mechanism designed to make it logistically and morally difficult for anti-government protests to build momentum in the near term.\n\nThe dangers are not only popular. Whoever is chosen will likely face assassination attempts if he is seen as offering too many concessions to the West. Hardliners within the Revolutionary Guards and the clerical establishment would treat such overtures as a betrayal, especially given that the regime has built its identity on resistance to America and Israel. The next leader is therefore boxed in: too much compromise invites a knife from within; too little invites destruction from without.\n\nAnd yet some accommodation may be unavoidable. The next Supreme Leader will almost certainly have to strike some kind of deal with Washington if the regime is to survive. Iran can exact a serious toll on American bases and allies across the Middle East, but it cannot withstand the combined might of the United States and Israel — at least not indefinitely. That hard ceiling, more than any single contender's résumé, may ultimately decide what kind of leader Iran ends up with.\n\n## Frequently Asked Questions\n\n**How was Iran's Supreme Leader killed?**\nIsrael killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in a strike that took about 60 seconds but rested on decades of intelligence work, intensified in the preceding six months with CIA help. The CIA tracked Khamenei's movements and, on learning he would attend a meeting at a leadership compound in central Tehran, passed the intelligence to Israel, prompting Israel and Washington to move up their strikes.\n\n**Who is governing Iran now that Khamenei is dead?**\nUnder Iran's constitution, power has passed to an interim leadership council made up of President Masoud Pezeshkian, judiciary chief Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Eje'i, and senior Guardian Council cleric Alireza Arafi. They will hold the post until a permanent Supreme Leader is selected, which could take a considerable time.\n\n**Who formally chooses the next Supreme Leader?**\nThe Assembly of Experts, an 88-member clerical body elected by the public every eight years, is responsible for selecting the Supreme Leader. The difficulty is that convening its members during an active war would concentrate Iran's senior clerics in one place, creating an obvious target for the United States and Israel.\n\n**Why might a Revolutionary Guard hardliner take over?**\nThe CIA assessed that Khamenei could be replaced by a hardliner from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Appointing one would signal that the regime intends to survive, and the IRGC is uniquely committed to defending the Islamic revolution at any cost, viewing the United States as an existential enemy.\n\n**Could a reformist like Hassan Rouhani become Supreme Leader?**\nIt is unlikely but not impossible. Former president Rouhani has the administrative and diplomatic experience a cornered regime might value, particularly for negotiating with Washington. However, the Guardian Council has already barred him from the Assembly of Experts, and his 2024 disqualification raises doubts about whether the regime would seriously consider him.\n\n**Why are the Larijani brothers seen as a possible solution?**\nAli Larijani, a former Guards commander and head of the Supreme National Security Council, has effectively run Iran since the January protests but cannot become Supreme Leader because he is not a cleric. His brother Sadiq, a cleric and former chief justice, could provide the religious legitimacy the constitution requires, while Ali supplies the security apparatus and diplomatic ties — formalizing an arrangement already in motion.\n\n**Is the Iranian regime likely to survive this crisis?**\nIt is an open question. Thousands died in the January protests, the country is reeling from American and Israeli strikes, and there were public celebrations of Khamenei's death. Still, an estimated 40 percent of Iranians support the regime, and the government has used a 40-day mourning period to blunt protest momentum. Survival may ultimately depend on whether the next leader can reach some kind of deal with Washington.\n\n## Sources\n\n- [Trump and Netanyahu want regime change, but Iran's regime was built for survival — The Conversation](https://theconversation.com/trump-and-netanyahu-want-regime-change-but-irans-regime-was-built-for-survival-a-long-war-is-now-likely-277193)\n- [Pete Hegseth on the Pentagon and Iran strikes — CNN](https://edition.cnn.com/2026/03/02/world/video/pete-hegseth-pentagon-iran-strikes-digvid)\n- [archive.is/JMSQP](https://archive.is/JMSQP)\n- [The funeral trap: how Iran is weaponising 40 days of mourning — Open Magazine](https://openthemagazine.com/world/the-funeral-trap-how-iran-is-weaponising-40-days-of-mourning)\n- [Iran International report](https://www.iranintl.com/en/202602288551)\n- [Iran begins 40-day mourning after Khamenei killed in US-Israeli attack — Al Jazeera](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/3/1/iran-begins-40-day-mourning-after-khamenei-killed-in-us-israeli-attack)\n- [archive.is/pIefY](https://archive.is/pIefY)\n- [Iran, Israel, US war: Khamenei successor and the supreme leader question — The Washington Post](https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/2026/03/02/iran-israel-us-war-khamenei-successor-supreme-leader/d4c9e20e-1644-11f1-aef0-0aac8e8e94db_story.html)\n- [Larijani, Trump and the Iran conflict — The Hill](https://thehill.com/policy/international/5763740-larijani-trump-iran-conflict/)\n- [Despite massive US attack and death of Ayatollah, regime change in Iran is unlikely — The Conversation](https://theconversation.com/despite-massive-us-attack-and-death-of-ayatollah-regime-change-in-iran-is-unlikely-277180)\n\n" url: https://homefronts.pub/article/who-will-replace-irans-supreme-leader.md canonical: https://homefronts.pub/article/who-will-replace-irans-supreme-leader datePublished: 2026-06-03 dateModified: 2026-06-03 author: - name: Simon Whistler url: https://homefronts.pub/author/simon-whistler publisher: HomeFronts image: "https://media.homefronts.pub/cdn-cgi/image/width=1600,height=900,fit=cover,quality=80,format=auto/articles/rkMfYDqOjlM/hero.jpg" type: Article contentHash: c0c14666c9b8c24085c3753ac5447375dd9ec0f18bac738d8dfdfa24cb51bbfb tokens: 6671 summaryUrl: https://homefronts.pub/article/who-will-replace-irans-supreme-leader.md.summary.md --- Sixty seconds. That was all the time it took for Israel to execute one of the most complex missions in recent history. When it ended, eight members of Iran's top leadership lay dead, including the nation's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Hosseini Khamenei. The man who had ruled the Islamic Republic for 36 years was gone in a single minute. But the strike itself was the tip of something much larger. According to the New York Times, the operation was the culmination of decades of painstaking intelligence work by Israel's secret service, accelerated over the preceding six months with the help of the CIA and other American agencies. The CIA had been tracking Khamenei's movements for months, mapping his patterns and locations. When analysts learned he would be at a leadership compound in the heart of Tehran for a meeting, they passed the intelligence to Israel. Washington and Israel moved up the timing of their initial strikes, which had been intended for the cover of darkness, and then needed only a minute to eliminate a man who had been a thorn in their side for a generation. The killing was a showcase of American and Israeli intelligence reach. Yet even some of its admirers in the espionage world saw a blunder. Critics described it as a strategic error that could alienate potential supporters inside Iran or open the door to someone even more radical. The deeper problem, as one veteran analyst put it, is that decapitation rarely delivers what its planners promise: leaders fall, and other leaders rise to take their place. With the Ayatollah dead, the urgent question is no longer whether Iran's regime was wounded, but who will inherit it. The answer will shape whether the Islamic Republic negotiates an exit from its crisis, hardens into something more dangerous, or collapses altogether. ## Key Takeaways - Israel and the United States killed Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in a 60-second strike that capped decades of intelligence work, leaving a contested succession in the middle of an active war. - Under Iran's constitution, power has passed temporarily to an interim leadership council of President Masoud Pezeshkian, judiciary chief Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Eje'i, and senior cleric Alireza Arafi until a permanent successor is named. - The Assembly of Experts, the 88-member clerical body that selects the Supreme Leader, is difficult to convene safely during wartime because assembling its members would create an obvious target. - A CIA assessment concluded a hardliner from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps could take over, with former Guards commander Ali Larijani — already running much of Iran's day-to-day governance — at the center of speculation. - Candidates range from dynastic figures like Mojtaba Khamenei and Hassan Khomeini, to the reformist Hassan Rouhani, to the ultra-conservative Ayatollah Mohammed Mehdi Mirbagheri, each carrying distinct liabilities. - A power-sharing arrangement between the Larijani brothers — cleric Sadiq supplying religious legitimacy and Ali supplying the security and diplomatic muscle — is one plausible outcome. - Whoever takes the role inherits an unenviable job: leading a country at war, facing internal unrest, and carrying a target on his back, with survival likely hinging on some kind of deal with Washington. ## A Sixty-Second Strike Decades in the Making The mission that killed Khamenei took a minute, but it rested on years of groundwork. Israeli intelligence had been building toward this for decades, and the effort intensified sharply in the half-year before the strike, joined by the CIA and other American agencies. Tracking a head of state who knows he is hunted is extraordinarily difficult, yet the agencies pieced together enough of Khamenei's habits and whereabouts to act on a single window of opportunity. That window was a meeting at a leadership compound in central Tehran. Once the CIA confirmed Khamenei would be there, the calculus changed. The strikes had been scheduled to launch in darkness, but the chance to take out the Supreme Leader in one stroke was too valuable to delay. Israel and Washington advanced their timeline, and in roughly the time it takes to read this paragraph aloud, the architecture of Iranian power lost its keystone. For Israel, the operation closed a chapter that had been open for decades. For the region, it opened a far more uncertain one. ## "The Leaders Are Always Replaced" Not everyone in the intelligence community celebrated. Even as the strike demonstrated formidable operational skill, seasoned veterans questioned its wisdom, warning that killing Khamenei could backfire by radicalizing the system it was meant to weaken. Israeli analyst Yossi Melman gave the most pointed critique. "The problem is that Israel is in love with assassinations," he told the Guardian, "and we never learn that it is not the solution. We have killed all the leaders of Hamas. They are still there. It's the same with Hezbollah. The leaders are always replaced." That observation frames the entire succession question. Removing one man does not dismantle an institution that has spent more than four decades preparing to outlive any single leader. The Islamic Republic was constructed with continuity in mind, and the death of its figurehead triggers a process that the regime has long anticipated, even if it never expected it to arrive quite like this. The real test is not the funeral, but who walks into the office next — and whether the system that produces him survives the war raging around it. ## How Iran Replaces a Supreme Leader Iran's constitution provides a clear procedure for exactly this scenario. When the Supreme Leader cannot perform his functions, authority transfers to an interim leadership council. That is precisely what happened after Khamenei's death on Saturday. The council is currently composed of three figures: President Masoud Pezeshkian, judiciary chief Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Eje'i, and a senior cleric from the Guardian Council, Alireza Arafi. They hold the reins until a permanent successor is chosen — a process that could stretch on for some time. Choosing that successor formally falls to the Assembly of Experts, an 88-member clerical body elected by the public every eight years. In ordinary times, the Assembly deliberates, vets candidates against the constitution's requirements, and installs the next leader. These are not ordinary times. With the country at war, simply gathering the Assembly's members in one place is fraught, because a concentration of Iran's senior clerics would present an obvious and tempting target for Washington and Jerusalem. The mechanism for succession exists, but the war has made executing it dangerous in the most literal sense. Even so, the names in contention matter. A new Supreme Leader will eventually be selected, and the shape of Iran's future depends heavily on which faction wins. ## The Case for an IRGC Hardliner Before Khamenei's death, the CIA had reportedly reached a conclusion about what might follow it. According to Reuters, the agency assessed that if the Supreme Leader were assassinated, his most likely replacement would be a hardline figure from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the elite armed force that operates parallel to Iran's regular army but answers directly to the Supreme Leader himself. From Tehran's vantage point, that logic holds. The killing of a leader who ruled for 36 years is an existential shock, and elevating a hardliner would be the clearest signal that the regime intends to fight on. Hardliners populate every branch of Iran's government, but the IRGC is distinct: its founding doctrine is the protection of the Islamic revolution, and its members are prepared to go to extreme lengths to defend it. As Kasra Aarabi, an expert on the IRGC, wrote in Engelsberg Ideas, the Guard Corps sees the United States as the embodiment of evil and views the Islamic Republic's survival as inseparable from America's defeat. By that reading, a Guards hardliner is the most logical choice. But logic and process are two different things — and the body that must ratify any choice is the one Iran can least afford to convene right now. ## Mojtaba Khamenei and the Problem of His Name Among individual contenders, the first name that surfaces is Mojtaba Khamenei, widely regarded as the most influential of the late Supreme Leader's sons. A mid-ranking cleric believed to control vast financial assets and to wield significant power behind the scenes, he first rose to national prominence in 2009. According to the Atlantic Council, he orchestrated the electoral fraud that secured a second term for then-President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and managed the state's crackdown on the post-election protests known as the Green Movement. During that unrest, Mojtaba took control of the basiji street militias and unleashed a wave of repression not unlike the violence seen during the January 2026 protests. The Guardian reported that those moves alienated many of the country's senior clerics, conservative politicians, and Revolutionary Guard generals. One politician close to the security apparatus said officials were unwilling to challenge the Khameneis openly, fearing it would weaken the nation. His deepest liability, though, is not an old feud. It is his surname. As Professor Muhammad Sahimi notes, one of the chief grievances against the Pahlavi dynasty was nepotism, and Iranians hoped the 1979 revolution would eliminate it. Installing Mojtaba — a mid-level cleric who has never earned the title of Ayatollah — risks reviving those grievances among an already restless population. That, to put it mildly, is a substantial obstacle. ## Hassan Khomeini: A "Relative" Moderate The second dynastic option, Hassan Khomeini, would face the same nepotism charge. Reuters has described him as the most visible of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's 15 grandchildren — the grandson of the founding figure who led post-revolutionary Iran, a useful distinction for anyone who confuses the Khomeinis with the Khameneis. Hassan is regarded as a relative moderate within Iran's clerical establishment, with "relative" doing considerable work in that sentence. According to Reuters, he maintains close ties to reformists, including former presidents Mohammed Khatami and Hassan Rouhani, both of whom pursued engagement with the West while in office. Khomeini has a track record of urging reform and has occasionally voiced dissent, including demands for accountability over the death of Mahsa Amini, the young Iranian woman who died in 2022 after being detained by morality police. Such stances have led some politicians in Tehran to see him as a counterweight to the hardliners who gained ground under Khamenei — notably the late Supreme Leader's son, Mojtaba. Yet Hassan has never served in government. His role has been symbolic: custodian of his grandfather's mausoleum in southern Tehran. That lack of administrative experience could weigh heavily at a moment when Iran needs steady, seasoned leadership. And like Mojtaba, he has never been granted the title of Ayatollah — a deficiency his detractors will not let pass unnoticed. ## Hassan Rouhani and the Reformist Off-Ramp Someone who does possess leadership experience is Khomeini's ally, former president Hassan Rouhani. A relative moderate, Rouhani led Iran from 2013 to 2021 and negotiated the landmark nuclear agreement with the Obama administration — the deal that President Trump scrapped during his first term. Rouhani remained on the Assembly of Experts until 2024, when he said he had been disqualified from running for reelection, a move he condemned as an infringement on Iranians' right to political participation. That disqualification complicates his prospects. It raises the question of whether the regime would even entertain him as a candidate for Supreme Leader, especially since the Guardian Council, which vets candidates, has already barred him from the very Assembly that would elect the next leader. The body that controls the door has effectively closed it. And yet Rouhani's profile is precisely what a cornered regime might want. His administrative depth, his diplomatic credentials, and his record of dealing with the West could make him attractive to a leadership desperate for someone capable of negotiating an off-ramp from the crisis with Washington. In a war the Islamic Republic cannot win outright, a proven negotiator becomes an asset — if the hardliners can be persuaded to tolerate one. ## Mirbagheri: Ideological Purity Over Pragmatism At the opposite end of the spectrum stands Ayatollah Mohammed Mehdi Mirbagheri, a senior cleric on the Assembly of Experts who is popular with hardliners. His admirers included the late Ayatollah Mohammad Taghi Mesbah Yazdi, who once wrote that Iran should not deny itself the right to produce "special weapons" — a thinly veiled reference to nuclear arms. Mirbagheri's theology aligns with ultra-conservative interpretations of Islamic law, and he heads the Islamic Cultural Center in Qom, the foremost institution for Islamic teaching in Iran. His elevation would send an unmistakable message: a regime that prizes ideological purity over pragmatism. Such a choice would likely lock in Iran's confrontational posture toward the West for the foreseeable future, foreclosing the kind of diplomatic flexibility a figure like Rouhani might offer. Mirbagheri represents the path of defiance — the bet that doubling down on revolutionary principle, rather than compromising with adversaries, is the surest route to the regime's survival. ## The Council Clerics: Arafi and Mohseni-Eje'i The interim council deserves close attention, because its members may govern Iran for an extended stretch — and that is the perfect platform from which to build credentials and convince both the Assembly of Experts and the Iranian public that one deserves the top job permanently. President Masoud Pezeshkian, though among the country's most powerful figures, is disqualified from the supreme post for a simple reason: he is not a cleric. That leaves the council's two clerics, Ayatollah Ali Reza Arafi and Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Eje'i. Arafi is the consummate insider. According to the Middle East Institute, his entire career has been built on appointments entrusted to him by Khamenei. From 2008 to 2018 he led Al-Mustafa International University, founded by Khamenei to export the regime's ideology abroad. A rapid succession of posts followed: head of all national seminaries in 2016, a handpicked seat on the Guardian Council in 2019, and membership in the Assembly of Experts in 2022. The Indian outlet The Week has called him a tech-savvy, second-generation hardliner with the right family connections. More than any other candidate, his appointment would signal pure continuity with Khamenei's regime. Mohseni-Eje'i is more complicated. He studied at the Haqqani School in Qom, a seminary that has produced many of Iran's leading hardline clerics, and one of his teachers was Mesbah Yazdi — the same ultra-conservative theologian who mentored Mirbagheri. His career has been defined by a willingness to use violence in defense of the regime. Yet according to Iran International, since becoming chief justice in 2021 he has gradually distanced himself from Tehran's ultra-hardliners and cultivated a relatively cooperative relationship with President Pezeshkian's moderate administration — drawing sharp criticism from those who accuse him of going soft. His appointment would suggest a regime willing to be pragmatic to ensure its own survival. ## The Larijani Brothers: A De Facto Leader and His Clerical Twin Even with all these contenders, the person who ends up wielding the most power in Iran could be a dark horse — and the leading dark horse is Ali Larijani. According to the CIA assessment cited earlier, the best-positioned successor to Khamenei could be Larijani, a former Revolutionary Guards commander and the current head of the Supreme National Security Council. The New York Times reports that Larijani has effectively been running Iran since the January protests. He oversaw the crushing of demonstrators demanding the end of Islamic rule, using lethal force. He managed the suppression of dissent, including the arrest of prominent reformist politicians; he liaised with powerful allies like Russia and regional players like Qatar and Oman; and he supervised nuclear negotiations with Washington. The Times further reported that he was drawing up plans to manage Iran through a potential war with the United States. His expanding portfolio had effectively sidelined President Pezeshkian. He has also been among the most visible figures since the strikes began. Hours after Khamenei was confirmed dead, Larijani appeared on Iranian state television with a fiery vow: "We will burn their hearts. We will make the shameless Americans regret their actions." Though he is not a member of the interim council, the powers he already commands make him something close to a de facto Supreme Leader. But "de facto" is likely where it stops, because Larijani is not a cleric — and the constitution reserves the supreme post for clerics. The document has been amended before to accommodate political reality, yet stripping out the clerical requirement would be a bridge too far for a regime whose entire legitimacy rests on the principle of clerical rule. That is where his brother enters. Sadiq Larijani is a cleric with extensive governing experience, currently chairman of the Expediency Discernment Council and a former chief justice. A close aide to Khamenei, he has long been viewed as a potential successor. According to United Against Nuclear Iran, however, corruption allegations trailing the end of his judicial career, along with the broader marginalization of the Larijani dynasty, have diminished his standing. Even so, that dynasty's supposed eclipse has not stopped one brother from rising to one of the most powerful positions in the country — which means Sadiq's elevation to Supreme Leader is not beyond the realm of possibility. Such an outcome would knit the brothers' divergent strengths together: Sadiq would supply the clerical legitimacy, while Ali would furnish the security connections, the pragmatic diplomatic experience, and the relationships with Russia and China that Tehran badly needs as it confronts Washington and Jerusalem. In essence, it would formalize what has been happening since January, when Ali Larijani began effectively running the country. ## An Open Question of Survival All of this remains prediction. Despite the temptation to read the IRGC's mind, no one yet knows who will emerge victorious in the race to become the next Supreme Leader. It could be one of the men profiled here, or it could be someone not yet on anyone's radar. Iran is in flux. With thousands dead from the January protests and the country reeling from American and Israeli strikes, it is genuinely uncertain whether the regime survives this crisis at all. Whoever inherits the mantle faces an unenviable task. He must lead a country through war with Israel and the United States while wearing a target on his back. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has insisted this is not a regime-change war — a claim complicated by the fact that the operation killed the man running the regime. President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, for their part, clearly want regime change; in announcing the strikes, they urged the Iranian people to seize control of their government. If that remains the goal, then whoever becomes Supreme Leader could find himself in American crosshairs sooner rather than later. There is also the possibility that Iranians heed the call to topple the government themselves. Despite Tehran's efforts to suppress public celebration of Khamenei's death, reports emerged from multiple cities of people partying in the streets. Sources told Iran International that residents were shouting in celebration. Farzad, a Tehran resident, described whistling and the honking of motorcycles and cars filling the air. "It just erupted all at once," he said. This was Tehran, where the state's capacity to monitor and surveil is strongest. If people will celebrate that openly in the capital, the scenes in cities with weaker government control can only be imagined. ## What the Crisis Means for the Regime's Grip Public jubilation over Khamenei's death is not, by itself, a death sentence for the Islamic Republic. As Rockford Weitz, a professor at Tufts University's Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, observed, roughly 40 percent of the nation still supports the regime. Mourners turned out by the thousands — not only in Tehran but in Shiraz, Yasuj, and Lorestan — to grieve the Ayatollah. Seizing on those numbers, the government declared 40 days of mourning, a measure analysts at the Open Magazine called a "funeral trap": a mechanism designed to make it logistically and morally difficult for anti-government protests to build momentum in the near term. The dangers are not only popular. Whoever is chosen will likely face assassination attempts if he is seen as offering too many concessions to the West. Hardliners within the Revolutionary Guards and the clerical establishment would treat such overtures as a betrayal, especially given that the regime has built its identity on resistance to America and Israel. The next leader is therefore boxed in: too much compromise invites a knife from within; too little invites destruction from without. And yet some accommodation may be unavoidable. The next Supreme Leader will almost certainly have to strike some kind of deal with Washington if the regime is to survive. Iran can exact a serious toll on American bases and allies across the Middle East, but it cannot withstand the combined might of the United States and Israel — at least not indefinitely. That hard ceiling, more than any single contender's résumé, may ultimately decide what kind of leader Iran ends up with. ## Frequently Asked Questions **How was Iran's Supreme Leader killed?** Israel killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in a strike that took about 60 seconds but rested on decades of intelligence work, intensified in the preceding six months with CIA help. The CIA tracked Khamenei's movements and, on learning he would attend a meeting at a leadership compound in central Tehran, passed the intelligence to Israel, prompting Israel and Washington to move up their strikes. **Who is governing Iran now that Khamenei is dead?** Under Iran's constitution, power has passed to an interim leadership council made up of President Masoud Pezeshkian, judiciary chief Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Eje'i, and senior Guardian Council cleric Alireza Arafi. They will hold the post until a permanent Supreme Leader is selected, which could take a considerable time. **Who formally chooses the next Supreme Leader?** The Assembly of Experts, an 88-member clerical body elected by the public every eight years, is responsible for selecting the Supreme Leader. The difficulty is that convening its members during an active war would concentrate Iran's senior clerics in one place, creating an obvious target for the United States and Israel. **Why might a Revolutionary Guard hardliner take over?** The CIA assessed that Khamenei could be replaced by a hardliner from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Appointing one would signal that the regime intends to survive, and the IRGC is uniquely committed to defending the Islamic revolution at any cost, viewing the United States as an existential enemy. **Could a reformist like Hassan Rouhani become Supreme Leader?** It is unlikely but not impossible. Former president Rouhani has the administrative and diplomatic experience a cornered regime might value, particularly for negotiating with Washington. However, the Guardian Council has already barred him from the Assembly of Experts, and his 2024 disqualification raises doubts about whether the regime would seriously consider him. **Why are the Larijani brothers seen as a possible solution?** Ali Larijani, a former Guards commander and head of the Supreme National Security Council, has effectively run Iran since the January protests but cannot become Supreme Leader because he is not a cleric. His brother Sadiq, a cleric and former chief justice, could provide the religious legitimacy the constitution requires, while Ali supplies the security apparatus and diplomatic ties — formalizing an arrangement already in motion. **Is the Iranian regime likely to survive this crisis?** It is an open question. Thousands died in the January protests, the country is reeling from American and Israeli strikes, and there were public celebrations of Khamenei's death. Still, an estimated 40 percent of Iranians support the regime, and the government has used a 40-day mourning period to blunt protest momentum. Survival may ultimately depend on whether the next leader can reach some kind of deal with Washington. ## Sources - [Trump and Netanyahu want regime change, but Iran's regime was built for survival — The Conversation](https://theconversation.com/trump-and-netanyahu-want-regime-change-but-irans-regime-was-built-for-survival-a-long-war-is-now-likely-277193) - [Pete Hegseth on the Pentagon and Iran strikes — CNN](https://edition.cnn.com/2026/03/02/world/video/pete-hegseth-pentagon-iran-strikes-digvid) - [archive.is/JMSQP](https://archive.is/JMSQP) - [The funeral trap: how Iran is weaponising 40 days of mourning — Open Magazine](https://openthemagazine.com/world/the-funeral-trap-how-iran-is-weaponising-40-days-of-mourning) - [Iran International report](https://www.iranintl.com/en/202602288551) - [Iran begins 40-day mourning after Khamenei killed in US-Israeli attack — Al Jazeera](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/3/1/iran-begins-40-day-mourning-after-khamenei-killed-in-us-israeli-attack) - [archive.is/pIefY](https://archive.is/pIefY) - [Iran, Israel, US war: Khamenei successor and the supreme leader question — The Washington Post](https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/2026/03/02/iran-israel-us-war-khamenei-successor-supreme-leader/d4c9e20e-1644-11f1-aef0-0aac8e8e94db_story.html) - [Larijani, Trump and the Iran conflict — The Hill](https://thehill.com/policy/international/5763740-larijani-trump-iran-conflict/) - [Despite massive US attack and death of Ayatollah, regime change in Iran is unlikely — The Conversation](https://theconversation.com/despite-massive-us-attack-and-death-of-ayatollah-regime-change-in-iran-is-unlikely-277180) <!-- youtube:rkMfYDqOjlM -->