After Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s death, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps pushed hard for the Assembly of Experts to immediately anoint his son Mojtaba Khamenei as successor. They first argued that the appointment needed to be an extra-constitutional one, bypassing the Assembly of Experts entirely. There was chaos in the process, compounded by the destruction of the Assembly office in the holy city of Qom by Israeli bombing; proceedings had to move online. Some Assembly members pushed back, noting the hereditary, monarchy-like nature of such an appointment. After a week, the result was announced. Of the members who participated – the quorum of two-thirds being met – some 85 per cent voted for Mojtaba Khamenei. Not unanimity, but well above the required threshold. That it took a week to get sufficient members in line tells its own story.

According to scholar Karim Sadjadpour, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the regime sought a supreme leader who would be palatable to the Revolutionary Guards and the senior clergy, and who had public name recognition. Mojtaba Khamenei possessed all three attributes.

The death of Ali Khamenei after 37 years in power and his replacement by his son, exposes the deeper architecture of power in Iran, and the longstanding political institutions that continue to structure and constrain power beyond any single leader. To understand how this outcome was produced –  and why it was nearly inevitable –  requires an understanding of Iran’s core political institutions

Iran’s Unique Mixture of Political Institutions

Iran constitutionally is a mixture of religious-based political institutions and standard democratic ones.  Regarding the latter, it holds regular elections for its president (four-year terms, with a two-term limit) and parliament (every four years, separate from the president). Until 1989, there was also a prime minister who shared executive power with the president.

In these elections, competition has traditionally been basically though not perfectly fair—the key exception being the 2009 presidential election in which the incumbent won fraudulently.  Indeed, reformist or reformist-leaning candidates won the presidency in 1997 and 2001 (Mohammad Khatami), 2017 (Hassan Rouhani in his re-election, after running from the centre in 2013), and 2024 (Masoud Pezeshkian, the current president).  All-candidate debates have also been the norm in presidential elections since 2009.  

However, Iran is no democracy.  This is because of the greater role of unaccountable religious-based political institutions, and because its elections are unfree. (In terms of presidential elections, this lack of freedom was especially the case in 2021.)

Early on the supremacy of the religious-based institutions was established via a conflict between the leader of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and President Abolhassan Banisadr. In 1980, Banisadr became the first president within the Islamic Republic, winning over three-quarters of the vote. In 1981, amidst  a power struggle with religious hardliners, Banisadr sought a referendum to let Iranians choose between democracy and theocracy.  However, the conservative parliament voted to impeach him, a move backed by Khomeini, who followed this with a months-long“reign of terror”, in which thousands of regime opponents were executed. 

In Iran the most powerful political position—and the first of its three religious-based political institutions—is the vali-ye faqih or “ruling jurist”, commonly referred to in English as the “supreme leader”.  The first such faqih or supreme leader was Grand Ayatollah Khomeini.  The supreme leader not only formally confirms the president but also is the effective head of government in terms of major policy decisions, including foreign and security policy, and he makes many other key appointments. The president is more in charge of domestic economic matters.  

This ruling jurist was initially required to be a “source of emulation”, that is, a Grand Ayatollah, the highest-ranking Shiite cleric.  However, in 1989, Grand Ayatollah Khomeini, after a conflict with Grand Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri, his likely successor at the time, had the constitution amended to lower the requirement to being a religious leader but not necessarily a leading authority. This change expanded the pool from 20 or so Grand Ayatollahs (worldwide) to some 5,000 Ayatollahs in Iran.  The supreme leader is chosen for life, making this position unaccountable—and meaning that Iran does not have responsible government.

Indeed, in 1989, Khamenei was not even an Ayatollah, but a Hojatoleslam (“proof of Islam”), the middle-ranking title far more numerous than that of Ayatollah.  Khamenei was the president, though, having been elected in 1981 and re-elected in 1985. To make him Khomeini’s successor, he was first appointed temporary supreme leader; the constitution was then amended, and the Assembly of Experts (see below) convened to elect him—now an Ayatollah—as the permanent supreme leader. Khamenei lacked the legitimacy of his predecessor, though.  He would strengthen his power over time, crucially by building up the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) and tying it to him.  (His son will likewise need time to establish his authority as supreme leader, and this will be more challenging to the extent he is unable to be fully active.)

The Council of Guardians

The second central religious-based political institution in Iran is the Council of Guardians, which, in various ways, ensures that Iran is ruled according to sharia law.  The council has twelve members:  six religious clerics appointed by the supreme leader and six lay scholars recommended by parliament and formally appointed by the Head of the Judiciary—himself an appointee of the supreme leader. The Council of Guardians functions as a religious supreme court. Yet it is much more than this.  Because all legislation passed in parliament must be approved by the Council of Guardians, it effectively serves as Iran’s upper house.  

Finally, the Council of Guardians also oversees all national elections and referenda, not merely in the sense of organizing them but most crucially by approving or rejecting on religious grounds Because the Council of Guardians is free to and, indeed, does reject candidates if they are too liberal or radical, it greatly limits the range of choices given to the voters, making elections in Iran unfree even if fair.  This range of restricted freedom has varied, from letting reformists run (and win) the presidency as noted to, in 2021, stacking the deck in favour of hardliner Ebrahim Raisi.

Choosing a Supreme Leader

The choice of a supreme leader is formally made by a two-thirds vote of the Assembly of Experts, the third religious-based political institution in Iran.  The Assembly of Experts is composed now of 88 clerics deemed knowledgeable in Islamic jurisprudence and is elected for an eight-year term.  With the supreme leader serving for life, a given Assembly of Experts may never be called on to select someone here. In any case, it usually meets twice a year for a short, effectively ceremonial session.

The Assembly of Experts itself is elected by universal suffrage, with the various regions of Iran each electing a set number based on population.  In theory, the Assembly of Experts can also remove a supreme leader who is deemed unfit to serve, but this has never happened and seems highly unlikely.  The analogy has sometimes been made with the College of Cardinals electing a new Pope.  However, voters do not pick the College of Cardinals.  More to the point, elections to the Assembly of Experts are not held when (and only when) there is a vacancy for supreme leader.  Candidates do not run saying a vote for them is a vote for a given supreme leader, just at most for a type of supreme leader.  The resulting low turnout for Assembly of Experts elections led to these being held simultaneously with parliamentary elections from 2016.

The Assembly of Experts does not exercise universal free will as much as approve a decision made by political insiders.  In 1989, parliamentary speaker (and imminent president) Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani pushed for Khamenei as supreme leader ‘testifying’ that this had been Khomeini’s wish, but also seeing him as someone whom Rafsanjani could overshadow, which was indeed the case for the first couple of years.  (The conservative victory in the 1992 parliamentary elections, in part due to Council of Guardians restrictions, and Khamenei’s growing political skills would weaken Rafsanjani, who would then be frustrated in his economic reforms.)  Nowadays it is the IRGC, as not just the most powerful military-security force but the largest economic cartel in Iran, which can truly pressure the Assembly of Experts.

Picking the New Supreme Leader

The recent succession process illustrates how these institutional dynamics operate in practice. The most recent Assembly of Experts election had been in 2024, at which point Supreme Leader Khamenei was 84, and the (sixth) Assembly elected would thus serve until 2032.  Thus, it was no surprise that the Council of Guardians was particularly restrictive in limiting the candidates here as it was likely that this Assembly would in fact need to select a new supreme leader.  The resulting Assembly of Experts was thus seen as weak and ‘obedient’.  But obedient to what end?

In 1989, the then-president was chosen as supreme leader.  There was no chance of that happening this time.  The current president Pezeshkian is a reformist, thus unacceptable to hardliners, and he is not a cleric at all (actually, he is a cardiac surgeon and a former health minister).  His apology to Gulf states for Iran’s attacks on them had to be walked back after outcry from hardliners at home.  More broadly, although Pezeshkian chairs the Supreme National Security Council he was not its key figure; that was its Secretary Ali Larijani, hence the very high priority for Israel to find and eliminate Larijani.  In contrast to President Pezeshkian, his predecessor, hardliner President Raisi, was clearly on any shortlist of a future supreme leader.  Raisi had many backers and wanted the role himself; moreover, Supreme Leader Khamenei was seen to be grooming Raisi for the position. His death in a helicopter crash obviously took him out of the running.

Besides Raisi, the one other name desired by regime hardliners—or as they would say principalists (loyal to the principals of the regime)—was Mojtaba Khamenei, the second son of Supreme Leader Khamenei.  Though frequently mentioned and clearly the front-runner during the process, Mojtaba Khamenei was never the choice of his father to succeed him, as he saw hereditary rule as being too much like the previous dynastic Pavlavi regime—which, to be clear, was a sultanistic (personalist) regime (Katouzian chapter) rather than an established legitimate monarchy.  When last year, post-Raisi and in the context of Israel’s surprise attacks on Iran, Supreme Leader Khamenei provided three names as part of planning for his death or indeed martyrdom, Mojtaba Khamenei was not one of these.

Nevertheless, after Supreme Leader Khamenei’s death, the IRGC pushed hard for the Assembly of Experts to immediately anoint Mojtaba Khamenei, strongly pressuring individual members.  Indeed, they first argued that the appointment needed to be an extra-constitutional one, bypassing the Assembly of Experts.  There was chaos in the Assembly process, and this had to be online as the Assembly office in the holy city of Qom was destroyed by Israeli bombing.  There was also pushback to the demand for Mojtaba Khamenei, with some Assembly members noting the hereditary, monarchy-like nature of such an appointment.  After a week though, this result was announced.  Of the Assembly of Experts members who participated (the quorum of two-thirds being met), some 85 percent voted for Mojtaba Khamenei—not unanimity, but well above the required two-thirds threshold.  That said, it doubtless took the week to get sufficient Assembly of Experts members in line.

According to scholar Karim Sadjadpour, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the regime sought a supreme leader who would be palatable to the Revolutionary Guards and the senior clergy, and who had public name recognition. Mojtaba Khamenei possessed all three attributes. Moreover, President Trump publicly dismissed him, something which ironically made him more attractive as a symbol of resistance.  There are moderates in Iran with name recognition who presumably would have been more acceptable to President Trump, and sometimes with stronger religious credentials to be supreme leader (Mojtaba Khamenei only became an Ayatollah in 2022). Key examples here include former President Rouhani and cleric Hassan Khomeini (Ruhollah Khomeini’s grandson, who was one of Supreme Leader Khamenei’s three preferred successors); however, their very moderation makes them unacceptable to the hardliners. In 2024 Rouhani was disqualified by the Council of Guardians from running for re-election to the Assembly of Experts, even though he had been a member for a quarter-century.

Where Power Ultimately Lies – Not With the Voters

In summary, even if Iranian presidents have varied in terms of ideology, the supreme leaders have not.  The best, though imperfect, analogy is to traditional monarchies where the monarch had most of the power and were always conservative, even if elected parliaments (and chancellors or prime ministers) were not always so—Imperial Germany, or Imperial Russia after the Duma became elected.  As outlined, in Iran under the Islamic Republic the voters pick the president, and reformers and/or moderates have usually been allowed to run and win the presidency.  But the voters do not pick the supreme leader, other than via the unaccountable indirect process of elections to the Assembly of Experts.  The Assembly of Experts has been both largely uniform in its conservatism and limited in its resistance to pressure, ensuring that it will pick a hardline supreme leader. In the Islamic Republic of Iran, leadership change matters less than the institutional system that shapes and constrains it.

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