The killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei by the United States and Israel has created an influence vacuum in the core of the Iranian regime and sparked the advanced strategy of discovering his successor.
The Islamic Republic has solely changed its supreme leader as soon as because it swept to energy almost half a century in the past. Khamenei, who succeeded Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1989, was killed with out an formally declared inheritor.
A 3-person council was fashioned Sunday to carry energy till Khamenei’s successor is chosen. But with the US-Israeli strikes ongoing, there is no indication of how lengthy that would possibly take.
Here’s what to know.
Under Iran’s structure, a three-person management council holds energy till the new supreme leader is named. It consists of the reasonable president, Masoud Pezeshkian, the hard-line head of the judiciary, Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei, and a senior cleric, Alireza Arafi.
The highly effective speaker of Iran’s parliament, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, stated the regime had “prepared ourselves for these moments” and “planned for all scenarios.”
“With the formation of a leadership council, an unimaginable power and cohesion will take shape,” he stated.
What it could not have deliberate for, nonetheless, is to have misplaced a number of of its most senior officers without delay. Israel has claimed that a “majority” of Iran’s senior army leaders have been killed in Saturday’s strikes, together with the armed forces chief of workers, Maj. Gen. Abdolrahim Mousavi; the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Maj. Gen. Mohammad Pakpour; and the secretary of Iran’s Defense Council, Ali Shamkhani.
When Khomeini died in 1989 — after the Iran-Iraq War, which lasted most of that decade — it took lower than a day for Khamenei to be named as his successor, that means there was no must kind a transition council. With US-Israeli strikes ongoing, naming Khamenei’s successor will take longer.
Until then, the non permanent council should resolve whether or not to proceed delegating protection decision-making to Ali Larijani, Iran’s prime nationwide safety official, and Ghalibaf. Both males have been tasked with main Iran’s protection throughout the 12-day struggle with Israel in June, together with Shamkhani, a former navy rear admiral who was killed in Saturday’s strikes.
Analysis: significance of Iran’s supreme leader being killed in strikes
A physique of 88 senior clerics, generally known as the Assembly of Experts, will choose Khamenei’s successor.
The members of the Assembly of Experts, which is elected by the Iranian public each eight years, are vetted by the Guardian Council, a separate physique of 12 jurists that oversees the actions of Iran’s parliament.
In regular instances, the Guardian Council determines if laws handed by the parliament is appropriate with sharia legislation, and it typically calls for revisions. It additionally approves candidates for parliament, the presidency and the Assembly of Experts.
It is recognized for disqualifying candidates for the presidency. Ahead of the 2021 election, as an example, the Guardian Council barred over 600 candidates, together with all the ladies in addition to senior figures akin to Larijani, the prime nationwide safety official.
Sanam Vakil, director of the Middle East and North Africa program at the Chatham House assume tank, stated the Assembly of Experts might not convene till the US and Israel wind down their operation. “They cannot risk further death and damage to the institution,” she advised NCS.
Khamenei’s second son, Mojtaba, is a major determine with robust hyperlinks to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the elite wing of Iran’s army, in addition to the Basij, a volunteer paramilitary pressure. But given that the regime swept to energy to switch the Iranian monarchy, the Shiite clerical institution might wish to keep away from father-to-son succession.
Alireza Arafi, a Shiite cleric who was named to the transition council on Sunday, was appointed to a number of senior positions by Khamenei and is seen as a robust contender. He is deputy chairman of the Assembly of Experts and is a member of the Guardian Council, that means he may vet his personal title. He is additionally head of Iran’s seminary system.
Mohammad Mehdi Mirbagheri, who additionally represents the most conservative wing of the clerical institution and sits in the Assembly of Experts, is one other contender. So is Hassan Khomeini, a grandson of Khomeini who is recognized to be much less hard-line than his friends.
There is, nonetheless, an opportunity for surprises. The regime might go for a youthful, much less well-known determine — or maybe for a council of leaders, slightly than a single particular person.
Vakil, of Chatham House, stated the stress between hard-liners and reformists won’t disappear with Khamenei’s dying.
“Moments of succession tend to strengthen conservative and security-driven factions, at least initially,” she stated. “Any internal debate about the country’s direction is likely happening quietly and within narrow elite circles rather than in public view. If reform politicians have ambitions, this is their now-or-never moment.”
US President Donald Trump urged Iranians to overthrow their authorities. “When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be, probably, your only chance for generations,” Trump stated in a video on Truth Social. He additionally known as on the IRGC to put down its weapons or “face certain death.”
So far, regardless of some scenes of celebration, there is little signal that Iranians are taking to the streets to attempt to topple what stays of the regime. Nor are there indicators of defections by elites inside the safety institution. Trump advised CBS News on Saturday that there are “some good candidates” to take energy, however he didn’t title them.
Reza Pahlavi, the eldest son of the deposed shah of Iran, has emerged as a possible subsequent leader. Pahlavi was solely 16 when Iran’s 1979 revolution toppled his father, and he has since lived in the United States. Some commentators have prompt he would have Israel’s backing.
One downside, nonetheless, is that there is not an alternate pressure ready to take energy in Iran, stated David Petraeus, a retired US Army normal and former CIA director.
“The challenge here is there is no Ahmed al-Sharaa figure, as in Syria, who had a military force, who was able to take down the hollow regime forces of the murderous Bashar al-Assad in Syria” in 2024, Petraeus advised NCS.
Robin Wright, a contributing author at the New Yorker, who has interviewed Khamenei, made the same level, telling NCS: “The Iranians have many young Nelson Mandelas, but they don’t have the kind of African National Congress you had in South Africa that had years to form an infrastructure, to define what the alternative to apartheid might look like, and who would be its leadership. … Iran doesn’t have any of that.”
With a lot of Iran’s management decapitated, energy will doubtless be exercised behind the scenes by the IRGC, which has more and more propped up the regime over a long time. Answerable solely to the supreme leader, the IRGC is tasked not solely with combating enemies overseas however, more and more, with retaining order at house.
The IRGC’s energy extends past army pressure. Many of Iran’s financial elites, who’ve benefited from sanctions-era entry to the regime’s facilities of energy, maintain influential positions in the IRGC. It may maintain vital sway over the appointment of the new supreme leader.
As its title suggests, the IRGC exists to “guard” the Islamic revolution and the regime it birthed. After 1979, numerous paramilitary teams that toppled the shah quickly coalesced into the IRGC. It resisted preliminary makes an attempt to be integrated into the common military and cemented its energy throughout its deployment in the Iran-Iraq War in the Eighties.
Today, it includes between 150,000 and 190,000 troops. It has a military, navy, air pressure and intelligence wing, and it has additionally turn into enmeshed all through Iran’s civilian economic system.
Although lots of its senior leaders are thought to have been killed throughout this weekend’s strikes, the IRGC nonetheless oversees the Basij, which operates like a police pressure: seen, street-level, home.
Meaning “mobilization” in Farsi, the Basij is a volunteer group that plucks members from throughout the nation, typically from poorer, extra conservative backgrounds. It is tasked with propping up the regime at house and implementing Islamic morality amongst the public.
Facing its best second of peril, the Iranian regime is “moving quickly behind the scenes to prevent fragmentation and signal continuity,” stated Vakil of Chatham House. It stays to be seen whether or not these efforts are profitable.