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The death Ayatollah Ali Khamenei following joint US-Israeli airstrikes has thrust Iran political and religious hierarchy into the process of selecting a new supreme leader.
Under Iran’s constitution, the supreme leader is appointed by the Assembly of Experts, an 88-member clerical body elected by the public every eight years.
Candidates for the Assembly are first vetted by the Guardian Council, tightly controlling who can run.
When the position becomes vacant, the Assembly convenes to deliberate and select a successor.
The decision requires a simple majority vote.
In the interim, a provisional three-member leadership council assumes the supreme leader’s duties until a replacement is formally appointed.
It has been reported that that the temporary council comprises President Masoud Pezeshkian, Judiciary Chief Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei and Ayatollah Alireza Arafi, who serves as the Guardian Council’s representative.
The council’s authority is strictly transitional, while the Assembly of Experts retains sole constitutional power to choose Iran’s next supreme leader.
What unfolds in the selection of a new leader remains to be seen. The choice of leader will also signal how Iran will sees it’s future in the Middle East and in the wider world.
Below are possible contenders for the role:
Mojtaba Khamenei
Mojtaba Khamenei, 56, is Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s second-eldest son. Bloomberg reported in January that Motjaba Khamenei oversees an investment empire, with unnamed sources saying he has access to Swiss bank accounts and British luxury property worth more than $100 million, despite US sanctions imposed on him back in 2019.
Khamenei’s son, who has largely avoided the public eye and has not held government office, is also believed to wield massive influence, including on Iran’s administrators and one of the country’s most powerful organizations, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), as well as the Basij volunteer paramilitary force.
But the fact that Mojtaba Khamenei is the Supreme Leader’s son may work against him: a father-to-son succession in the Shiite Muslim clerical establishment may spark outrage. Khamenei had already indicated opposition to his son’s candidacy, an Iranian source close to his office told Reuters in 2024, adding that the leader did not want to witness a return to hereditary rule, as many Iranians view it as undermining the 1979 revolution, which ousted the US-backed authoritarian monarchy of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.
Alireza Arafi
After Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s death, Iran named senior cleric Alireza Arafi to its interim leadership council, which also includes President Pezeshkian and Chief Justice Mohseni-Eje’i.
Arafi has been a member of the Guardian Council—the country’s powerful Islamic legal authority, comprised of clerics and lawyers—since 2019. The council is mandated to oversee elections, to vet candidates for elections, and to veto legislation passed by the parliament to ensure conformity with Islamic standards. Arafi also heads the Iranian seminary.
According to Alex Vatanka of the Washington-based think tank Middle East Institute, Arafi’s rise to power could be traced to how the latter has appointed him to senior posts. Vatanka described Arafi as one of Khamenei’s “loyalists that will advance his agenda and in return they enjoy his patronage”.
Mohammad Mehdi Mirbagheri
Mohammad Mehdi Mirbagheri, an Assembly of Experts member since 2015, is known as a staunch conservative in the clerical establishment.
The current leader of the Islamic Sciences Academy in the northern city of Qom, Mirbagheri gained public attention in 2024, after the sudden death of President Ebrahim Raisi, when he expressed support for the hardline candidate Saeed Jalili through his speeches. According to activist outlet Iran Wire, “super-revolutionary” factions in the establishment view Mirbagheri as a potential future leader.
Mirbagheri has made headlines for his extreme rhetoric, including thwarting “infidels” and branding the 2022 Woman, Life, Freedom protests after Mahsa Amini’s killing as “Western-inspired sedition.” Mirbagheri has also previously quoted the late Supreme Leader Khomeini, saying that establishing a “new culture based on Islam in the world” would entail “hardship, martyrdom, and hunger” and that the Iranian people had “voluntarily chosen” to take that path.
Ali Larijani
Ali Larijani, a veteran politician, took the reins of Iran’s crisis management and national security at the start of this year, Iranian officials told the Times. He was appointed by Pezeshkian and Khamenei to head Iran’s Supreme National Security Council in August last year—a post he held from 2005 to 2007—and in that role led nuclear negotiations with the Trump Administration before the US and Israel launched attacks over the weekend. He was also in charge of the deadly crackdown on anti-government protests earlier this year, for which he was sanctioned by the US government.
The 67-year-old has a storied career behind him that has positioned him well to act as a power broker after Khamenei’s assassination. He was a former commander in the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, the head of Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting from 1994 to 2004, and has held several other governmental roles over four decades. He unsuccessfully ran for President in 2005, and filed for candidacy in the 2021 and 2024 presidential elections but was disqualified in both.
He is known for being a loyalist to Khamenei and a pragmatist in managing relations between rival factions within the country. He also brought a pragmatic approach to nuclear talks with the US, reportedly telling Oman state television last month that “if the Americans’ concern is that Iran should not move toward acquiring a nuclear weapon, that can be addressed.”
After the US-Israeli attacks, however, Larijani has urged powerful retaliation and has alos stated that Iran will not be involved in peace talks with the US.. “We will make the Zionist criminals and the shameless Americans regret their actions,” he posted on Saturday, noting in another post that Iran did not initiate the hostilities. “The brave soldiers and the great nation of Iran will deliver an unforgettable lesson to the hellish international oppressors.”
Hassan Khomeini
Hassan Khomeini is the grandson of Iran’s late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic who oversaw the 1979 revolution. While Khomeini, a cleric, has not held public office, he is considered a potential successor given his reformist views and his lineage.
After the June strikes on Iranian nuclear sites, Reuters reported that Khomeini had already emerged as a frontrunner to succeed Khamenei. Amid conflict with the US then, five insiders told Reuters that Khomeini, who reportedly commands respect among the IRGC and Iran’s senior clerics, could represent a more moderate Iran compared to Khamenei’s son, Mojtaba. Iran International reported that in May last year, Khomeini, at the mausoleum of his late grandfather, said: “Sometimes dignity is born through war, and sometimes through holding firm in the field of negotiation.”
Khomeini’s close links to reformists, who have for decades tried—but failed—to open Iran up, resulted in Khomeini being barred from running for a seat at Iran’s top clerical body, the Assembly of Experts, back in 2016. The body manages the Supreme Leader and ensures that he continues to qualify as one, lest they remove him.
Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Eje’i
Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Eje’i has served as the head of Iran’s judiciary since Khamenei appointed him in July 2021. The 69-year-old, who is also a senior jurist, has held a number of other official positions, including serving as intelligence minister from 2005 to 2009, prosecutor-general from 2009 to 2014, and first deputy chief justice from 2014 to 2021.
Mohseni-Eje’i is widely seen as a hardline conservative. The US State Department and the European Union sanctioned him in 2011 for his role in crushing protests in support of the political opposition after the 2009 presidential election. According to the sanction decision by the E.U., intelligence agents under Mohseni-Eje’i’s command detained, tortured, and coerced false confessions from hundreds of activists, journalists, dissidents and reformist political figures.
As millions of people took to the streets of Iran after the rial plunged, Mohseni-Eje’i vowed to show “no leniency” to protestors and called for expedited trials and executions. He also accused the US and Israel of having “openly and explicitly supported the unrest” in Iran.
