Iran's leadership swiftly scrapped its existing single-leader system after a joint U.S.-Israel airstrike on the 28th last month killed Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader, and triggered a chain of explosions that killed senior figures.
Instead, to prevent a recurrence of the worst-case scenario in which the command is annihilated at once by precision strikes, it is seeking survival under a three-tiered interim wartime system that thoroughly disperses power.
On the 4th (local time), according to Al Jazeera and other Middle Eastern outlets, Iran is currently led outwardly by a three-person interim leadership committee headed by President Masoud Pezeshkian, Judiciary Chief Gholam-Hossein Mohseni Ejei, and conservative cleric Alireza Arafi. They each oversee state administration, the judiciary, and religious authority. The three top leaders by field serve a symbolic role in signaling at home and abroad that Iran's national system has not collapsed and is operating normally.
But this is only a nominal separation of powers; the authority of the elected executive branch has shrunk under a wartime management system. President Pezeshkian, a former cardiac surgeon, has long drawn a line on resolving the government's morass, saying about himself that he is "a doctor, not a politician." The New York Times (NYT) said that even for a relatively simple administrative decision such as lifting an internet shutdown after recent large-scale anti-government protests in Iran, he could not decide on his own and had to seek permission from a real power broker.
Practical state management and national strategy control are exclusively handled by Ali Larijani, secretary of the Supreme National Security Council (SNSC). The SNSC is Iran's top decision-making body for security and foreign policy. The president serves as chair, but practical policy coordination and execution fall to the secretary. In a structure that includes the parliamentary speaker, the judiciary chief, the military's chief of staff, and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) leadership, Larijani is positioned to coordinate institutional interests and move the government as a whole.
Larijani is a conservative elite politician who served 12 years as Iran's parliamentary speaker. Even before Khamenei's death, he was entrusted with a special mandate to ensure the regime's survival, leading core national portfolios from hard-line crackdowns on anti-government protests to managing key diplomatic channels and U.S. nuclear talks. He visited Moscow to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin and frequently appeared on television, effectively acting as Iran's real power figure. After the latest U.S. invasion, Larijani appeared in an Al Jazeera interview in Doha, Qatar, saying, "Iran has become stronger than before, and it will not start a war, but if forced, it will respond forcefully," vowing a fight to the end. The NYT said Larijani is "pushing the executive branch to the sidelines and effectively running Iran."
However, he is not someone who directly controls military command or the nuclear program, but is assessed as a political manager who coordinates wartime policy. Because of that, some analyze he is unlikely to be the No. 1 target for elimination by the United States or Israel. Removing a political elite who maintains diplomatic channels could instead allow hard-liners in the military to seize power and worsen the situation.
Actual warfighting and internal security are fully dominated by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The IRGC lost many top commanders in the recent Israeli surprise strike. Since then, each commander has been required to predesignate successors down three ranks so that if a superior is killed in action, a subordinate immediately assumes command to continue the counterattack, redesigning the command system accordingly. This measure took a lesson from the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, when the collapse of Iraq's command led to the disintegration of its forces. The IRGC has also further tightened domestic control in case anti-government protests spread. Its Basij militia and plainclothes agents are said to have set up checkpoints at key thoroughfares in city centers, including in the capital Tehran, to block protesters from massing.
The longer the absence of a legitimate supreme leader continues, the more Iran's theocratic system's vulnerabilities will inevitably be exposed. Soon, the 88-member Assembly of Experts, which has the authority to choose the supreme leader, is expected to embark, under the risk of bombardment and in strict secrecy, on the process of selecting a successor.
The leading contenders are narrowed to Mojtaba Khamenei, Khamenei's son, and Alireza Arafi, who represents the religious institutional sector on the interim leadership committee. Born in 1969, Mojtaba has no experience in public office. However, based out of his father's office, he has managed massive national foundation asset and served as the regime's key gatekeeper, making him the unofficial most powerful figure in Iran. His rival Arafi is a traditional religious elite who served as a Commissioner on the Guardian Council. He has such a solid base of support within the religious community that he once claimed to have converted 50 million people to Shia Islam.
The AP said of Mojtaba that "for a long time, he has closely aligned with hard-liners in the IRGC and the Quds Force leadership and acted as a power broker," adding that "during President Donald Trump's first term in 2019, he was placed on a U.S. sanctions list on suspicion of leading the regime's repression objectives."