With Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei dead, Iran has formed a three-person interim Leadership Council under the constitution.
On the 1st (local time), under Article 111 of the constitution, which defines acting authority when the supreme leader is incapacitated, President Masoud Pezeshkian, Judiciary Chief Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei, and one Islamic law expert from the Guardian Council formed a three-member Leadership Council to carry out the duties and powers of the supreme leader during the transition, state-run IRNA reported.
Mohammad Mokhber, a top confidant of Ayatollah Khamenei and his adviser as well as former first vice president, also confirmed this to the outlet. Under the constitution, the Assembly of Experts, Iran's constitutional body, must elect the next supreme leader as swiftly as possible.
Iranian experts said that rather than the institutionally constituted interim Leadership Council, former Vice President Mokhber, once called "Khamenei's right-hand man," and Ali Larijani, secretary of the Supreme National Security Council who currently oversees military and security affairs, are likely to wield real power in a wartime situation.
Meanwhile, the Iranian government confirmed the previous day that Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Commander-in-Chief Mohammad Pakpour and Ayatollah Khamenei's chief security adviser Ali Shamkhani were killed in U.S. and Israeli airstrikes. The elite Revolutionary Guard said that in June last year, then-Commander-in-Chief Hossein Salami was killed in U.S.-Israeli bombing.