Hours after Iran confirmed the killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the man who had personified the Islamic republic for nearly four decades, senior leaders assumed to be in hiding appeared one by one on state television in a bid to project continuity and defiance.
Top political and military figures insisted the succession process for a new supreme leader would be conducted as laid out by the constitution, with a three-man interim council providing leadership during a transition period.
Iran’s top security official Ali Larijani, making his first appearance since the US and Israel launched the war, said the interim leadership council — a trio of top officials overseeing the transition — was scheduled to convene that day.
Later Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araghchi told Al Jazeera on Sunday that the state institutions were functioning so smoothly that the “constitutional procedures” may be completed soon. “You may see the selection of a supreme leader in a day or two,” said Araghchi.
The message the regime was desperate to send, both to Iranians and its enemies, was that despite the loss of Khamenei, the Islamic republic would live on. There was a clear path forward under law and Iran had time to choose its next leader.
Yet whatever plans the regime made are facing a fearsome test: American and Israeli bombs raining down on regime institutions, top politicians and military figures involved in the transition.
“They need to project an orderly calm and showcase institutional stability, but at the same time anybody who is elevated is in the US and Israel’s deck of targets,” said Sanam Vakil, Middle East director at Chatham House.
“They announced the interim leadership council. The problem is you don’t know if that council will see another day, because it’s not just Khamenei who is going to die and you don’t know who is going to survive.”
The three members of the interim council — President Masoud Pezeshkian, Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei, judiciary chief, and Guardian Council member Alireza Arafi, a powerful hardliner and potential succession candidate himself, could all be in the US’s and Israel’s crosshairs as they push for regime change.
Pezeshkian survived an Israeli bombing attack during the war in June, which struck a building where he was heading a meeting of the Supreme National Security Council. In the first two days of this war, multiple top officials have already been killed, including the commander of the Revolutionary Guards, the defence minister, the chief of staff of the armed forces and the head of the defence council.
Ensuring a smooth succession was a constant theme of Khamenei’s last years as supreme leader. It took on added urgency during Israel’s 12-day war against the republic last June after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu threatened to assassinate the 86-year-old cleric.
Khamenei, who had ruled since 1989, seemed prepared for the moment, staying in his compound in Tehran despite the looming threat of US and Israeli strikes.
Ultimately, the selection of the next supreme leader — who has to be a senior cleric loyal to the system — falls to the Assembly of Experts, an 88-member body of clerics. But it is unclear how they would meet as the US and Israel keep up their intense bombing campaign.
“I don’t expect a successor to emerge until the dust settles on this conflict because they would have a target on their back of whoever is selected,” said Ali Vaez, an Iran expert at Crisis Group think-tank.
The death of Khamenei, who was one of the longest-serving leaders in Iran’s contemporary history, and the appointment of a successor has long been considered as being a pivotal moment in the republic’s history.
Khamenei, who determined all major domestic and foreign policies, was often viewed as a barrier to change. Prior to the war, succession was looked upon as a potential opening during which the republic’s leadership could choose to implement constitutional changes that would dilute or remove the supreme leader’s power, making the state less ideological and more militaristic.
But there was also the potential for the transition to entrench the power of hardliners who want to double down on Islamic ideology.
Iran’s political system is defined by complex, often opaque struggles among elite factions, particularly over the issue of succession and the trajectory the republic should take both in domestic and foreign affairs.
While the balance of power is complex, the Revolutionary Guards are the dominant force, wielding influence not only in military affairs but across the economy and domestic politics.
Many Iranian analysts have previously suggested the guards would heavily influence the succession process, or even that a figure could emerge from the elite unit as the nation’s key decision maker and effective leader.
But the guards are not monolithic; internal rivalries exist among different generations and ideological currents and dozens of its senior commanders have been killed in Israeli air strikes over the past two years.
“This is where we will see how loyal the guards are to the system,” said Vakil, asking if their interests were in the continuation of the current regime or “to power itself”.
“If the republic is going to keep the process the way it is — a senior cleric could fill the void, a low-profile, young, pious, unassuming, loyal to the system — those were Khamenei’s requirements.”
There are, however, no obvious frontrunners to be supreme leader. Ebrahim Raisi, a hardline cleric and Khamenei protégé, was considered a top candidate, but he died in a helicopter crash in 2024 during his first term as president.
Khamenei’s son, Mojtaba, was also thought to be a leading contender, but it is not known if he was still alive after the supreme leader’s compound was bombed on Saturday morning. There have so far been no statements about his welfare in Iran’s state media; his wife was killed in the attack.
Vaez said that whoever became supreme leader would not be as powerful as Khamenei and “will be completely reliant on the guards to keep things together”.
In the interim, Larijani, a former nuclear negotiator who returned to prominence as a senior confidant of Khamenei after Israel’s June war, and Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker of parliament who is a powerful regime loyalist close to the guards, could play more prominent roles, analysts said.
They were among the first senior figures to condemn Khamenei’s killing and vow revenge.
Like others, Vaez said that Khamenei’s death on its own would not precipitate the regime’s collapse.
“This was never a one-man show. As much as Khamenei had appropriated all levers of power, it was still a system,” he said. “And it doesn’t have an organised viable alternative inside the country that could seriously challenge it.”