In the wake of the death of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei after nearly 37 years in power, Iran is turning immediately to the constitutional machinery that governs succession. The interim period is built around a temporary leadership council that will keep the country running while clerics begin the process of picking the next supreme leader.
Under Iran’s constitution, the council is set up to “temporarily assume all the duties of leadership” and govern while the next supreme leader is selected. The council includes Iran’s sitting president, the head of the judiciary, and a member of the Guardian Council chosen by Iran’s Expediency Council, which advises the supreme leader and helps settle disputes with parliament. Iran’s reformist president, Masoud Pezeshkian, and the hard-line judiciary chief, Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei, are among the named members of the interim body.
While the leadership council governs in the interim, the next supreme leader is not chosen by that council. Instead, an 88-member panel called the Assembly of Experts is tasked with selecting a new supreme leader under Iranian law, and it must do so “as soon as possible.” The assembly consists entirely of Shiite clerics who are popularly elected every eight years, but candidacies are subject to approval by the Guardian Council, which functions as a constitutional watchdog.
The Guardian Council’s role in vetting candidates also extends to Assembly of Experts elections. The Guardian Council barred former President Hassan Rouhani, a relative moderate whose administration struck the 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, from election to the Assembly of Experts in March 2024, illustrating how candidates can be disqualified ahead of selection. That vetting power narrows the field from which the Assembly of Experts can choose.
Speculation about the identity of the next supreme leader centers on the background politics that usually shape clerical deliberations—often far from public view. One potential factor in those discussions has been Khamenei’s political and religious network, including debate over whether a successor could emerge from within his immediate family circle.
AP reported that Ebrahim Raisi was previously thought to be a possible candidate, but Raisi was killed in a May 2024 helicopter crash. With Raisi gone, AP said that one of Khamenei’s sons, Mojtaba, is viewed as a potential candidate. Mojtaba is described as a 56-year-old Shiite cleric who has not held government office, leaving open both the plausibility of his selection and the political reaction inside Iran if the succession resembles a family handoff.
AP described how a father-to-son transfer could spark anger among Iranians already critical of clerical rule, while also potentially energizing supporters who favor continuity in the system. Such a move could be seen by critics as creating a new religious dynasty after the 1979 collapse of the U.S.-backed Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi’s government, even as supporters may argue the structure reflects established clerical authority.
Succession in Iran’s supreme-leader post also has historical grounding, but few recent precedents. AP said there has been only one other transfer of power in the office of supreme leader: the transition in 1989 after Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini died at age 86. AP also linked this rare transition to the current international pressure environment, saying Israel launched a 12-day war against Iran in June 2025.
The stakes for the choice go beyond ceremony because the supreme leader sits at the center of Iran’s power-sharing Shiite theocracy and has final say over all matters of state. The supreme leader also serves as commander in chief of the military and the Revolutionary Guard, a paramilitary force that the United States designated a terrorist organization in 2019, and which Khamenei empowered during his rule. AP said the Revolutionary Guard has led the “Axis of Resistance” and also has extensive wealth and holdings inside Iran.