Tehran: The assassination of Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah
Ali Khamenei in a joint attack by Israel and the United States after nearly 37
years of leadership has raised important questions about the future of the
country.
The morning after Khamenei’s assassination, the country
began to map out a complex succession process that would culminate in the
election of a new supreme leader.
According to Iran’s constitution, an interim leadership
council has been established to assume all duties of the country’s leadership.
The council is made up of the country’s current president, the head of the
judiciary, and a member of the Guardian Council, who is selected by Iran’s
Expediency Council.
The interim council’s members include reformist President
Masoud Pezzekiyan and hardline judiciary chief Gholam Hossein Mohseni-Ezhe.
The council will rule temporarily, but under Iranian law,
the 88-member Assembly of Experts must quickly elect a new supreme leader. All
members of this assembly are elected Shiite clerics, who are elected through
popular elections every eight years and whose qualifications are confirmed by
the Guardian Council.
The succession process is largely a secretive process,
making it difficult to predict potential candidates. Hardline President Ebrahim
Raisi was initially thought to be trying to replace Khamenei, but he died in a
helicopter crash in May 2024. Now Khamenei's son, Mojtaba Khamenei, a
56-year-old Shiite cleric, is a possible candidate, although he has never held
public office.
This is the second time that the office of the Supreme
Leader has undergone a leadership transition in Iran, the first being after the
death of Grand Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1989. The current
transition comes after Israel launched a 12-day war on Iran in June 2025.
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