Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has been killed in a major attack by Israel and the US, raising questions about the future of the Islamic Republic, as well as the larger region.
President Donald Trump said Khamenei’s death gave Iranians their “greatest chance” to “take back” their country.
Khamenei was one of only two Supreme Leaders in Iran. According to Iranian law, a clerical panel called the Assembly of Experts “must, as soon as possible” pick a new supreme leader.
The process, however, is likely to be complex. For now, a temporary council has been formed to govern the country.
A temporary leadership council takes charge
Until the Assembly of Experts chooses a new leader, a council can step in and “temporarily assume all the duties of leadership”. This council has been formed now.
The council is made up of Iran’s sitting president, the head of the country’s judiciary and a member of the Guardian Council chosen by Iran’s Expediency Council, which advises the supreme leader and settles disputes with Parliament.
Iran’s reformist President Masoud Pezeshkian and hard-line judiciary chief Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei are on it.
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How the Assembly of Experts picks a new Supreme Leader
An 88-member panel called the Assembly of Experts appoints the supreme leader. The panel can remove one as well, although that has never happened. The Supreme Leader must be a senior Shia cleric and scholar.
The panel consists entirely of Shiite clerics who are popularly elected every eight years and whose candidacies are approved by the Guardian Council, Iran’s constitutional watchdog. That body is known for disqualifying candidates in various elections in Iran and the Assembly of Experts is no different. The Guardian Council barred former Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, a relative moderate whose administration struck the 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, from election for the Assembly of Experts in March 2024.
The possible contenders
Clerical deliberations about succession and machinations over it take place far from the public eye, making it hard to gauge who may be a top contender.
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Previously, it was thought Khamenei’s protege, hard-line President Ebrahim Raisi, may try to take the mantle. However, he was killed in a May 2024 helicopter crash. That has left one of Khamenei’s sons, Mojtaba, a 56-year-old Shiite cleric, as a potential candidate, though he has never held government office. But a father-to-son transfer in the case of a supreme leader could spark anger. Some may see it as un-Islamic and in line with creating a new, religious dynasty after the 1979 collapse of the U.S.-backed Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi’s government.
The Supreme Leader himself had told his followers that he did not want the post to be hereditary.
In June, during the 12-day war with Israel, when Khamenei was in hiding, he named three candidates who could be appointed swiftly to succeed him, according to a New York Times report.
These were the head of the judiciary, Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Eje’i; Ayatollah Khamenei’s chief of staff, Ali Asghar Hejazi; and Hassan Khomeini, a moderate cleric from the reformist political faction and a grandson of Ayatollah Khomeini.
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All three appear to have survived the initial wave of attacks.
A transition like this has happened only once before
There has been only one other transfer of power in the office of supreme leader of Iran, the paramount decision-maker since the country’s 1979 Islamic Revolution.
In 1989, Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini died at age 86 after being the figurehead of the revolution and leading Iran through its bloody eight-year war with Iraq.
The vast powers of a supreme leader
The supreme leader is at the heart of Iran’s complex power-sharing Shiite theocracy and has final say over all matters of state.
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He also serves as the commander-in-chief of the country’s military and the powerful Revolutionary Guard, a paramilitary force that the United States designated a terrorist organization in 2019 and which Khamenei empowered during his rule. The Guard, which has led the self-described “Axis of Resistance,” a series of militant groups and allies across the Middle East meant to counter the US and Israel, also has extensive wealth and holdings in Iran.
