As outlined in its constitution, Iran formed a council to assume leadership duties and govern the country. 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.
Reformist President Masoud Pezeshkian and hard-line judiciary chief Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei are among its members who will step in and “temporarily assume all the duties of leadership.”Also Read: Iran’s Ali Khamenei, who based iron rule on fiery hostility to US and Israel, dies at 86
Though the leadership council will govern in the interim, an 88-member panel called the Assembly of Experts “must, as soon as possible” pick a new supreme leader under Iranian law.
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. The 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 from election for the Assembly of Experts in March 2024.
Clerical deliberations about succession take place far from the public eye. The 88 members of the Assembly of Experts are expected to gather and have a discussion about who will be the next leader.
There are two scenarios outlined. One is that Ali Khamenei, before his death, provided four names. Another is that during an interim time, there will be a council of four people who will run the country until the new leader is elected.
Also Read: Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei confirmed dead; here’s who could be his successor
Previously, it was thought that Khamenei’s protégé, hard-line President Ebrahim Raisi, might try to take the mantle. However, he was killed in a May 2024 helicopter crash. That has left one of Khamenei’s sons, Mojtaba Khamenei, a 56-year-old Shiite cleric, as a potential candidate, though he has never held government office. A father-to-son transfer in the case of a supreme leader could spark anger, not only among Iranians already critical of clerical rule, but also among supporters of the system, with some potentially seeing it as un-Islamic and in line with creating a new religious dynasty after the 1979 collapse of the US-backed government of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.
There has been only one other transfer of power in the office of the supreme leader of Iran, the paramount decision-maker since the country’s 1979 Islamic Revolution.
In 1989, Ruhollah Khomeini died at age 86 after being the figurehead of the revolution and leading Iran through its eight-year war with Iraq. Khamenei succeeded him.
The supreme leader is at the heart of Iran’s complex power-sharing Shiite theocracy and has final say over all matters of state. He also serves as commander-in-chief of the country’s military and the powerful Revolutionary Guard, a paramilitary force that the United States designated a terrorist organisation in 2019 and which Khamenei empowered during his rule. The Guard has led the self-described “Axis of Resistance,” a series of militant groups and allies across the Middle East meant to counter the United States and Israel, and also has extensive wealth and holdings in Iran.
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