Killing Khamenei was easy — toppling Iran’s regime is not

The latest Israeli and US war on Iran began with strategic airstrikes on the home and offices of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who was reportedly meeting with advisors at the time and has been confirmed dead from the surprise attack.

The apparent US-Israeli assumption behind the targeted strikes was that Khamenei’s sudden removal would fatally weaken Iran’s Islamic regime. The logic resembled the collapses seen in Libya after Muammar al-Qaddafi and in Syria after Bashar al-Assad, where the state unraveled once those central figures were removed. In those cases, political order was deeply personal and closely tied to a single ruler.

Iran, however, is structured much differently. Few contemporary states place as much visible authority in one leader as Iran does in the supreme leader. Religious legitimacy, command of the armed forces and final political arbitration converge in the office, which sits atop a dense institutional network designed not merely to serve the leader but to constrain, supervise and, if necessary, outlast him.

The Islamic Republic is not a personalist regime cloaked in religious language. It is a revolutionary system built with an acute awareness of its own vulnerabilities, and it has invested heavily in preparing for leadership disruption. Under pressure, as the regime faces now, its structure is designed to consolidate rather than fragment.

Iran’s political behavior cannot be understood without appreciating how deeply its ruling elite internalizes history. The Iranian state has experienced repeated political vacuums over centuries, historical episodes that continue to shape elite thinking. Modern crises are instinctively measured against earlier collapses.

Although Jafari Shiite jurisprudence formally rejects analogical reasoning, Iranian leaders routinely use history as a guide. The fall of the Qajar dynasty, the Safavid collapse after the capture of Isfahan, the chaos following Nader Shah’s death and the civil wars after Karim Khan Zand’s death all conveyed the same lesson: When leadership disappears without a mechanism for succession, the country risks disintegration.

Those are not dusty historical footnotes. They are the precise scenarios Iran’s current leadership has spent decades designing against — and is now being forced to stress-test in real time.

For the architects of the 1979 revolution, these were not abstract concerns. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini did not abolish supreme authority; he institutionalized it. The constitutional debates of 1979 focused intensely on avoiding historical patterns of collapse. Each major body created in the constitution was designed to address a specific risk exposed by earlier failures.

The Guardian Council was established to prevent ideological drift and ensure conformity with Islamic principles. The Assembly of Experts was tasked with selecting and supervising the supreme leader to prevent the unchecked concentration of power.

The Expediency Council was designed to resolve institutional deadlock so governance could continue during disputes. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the intelligence services were created to defend the revolution against both internal and external threats.

This overlapping institutional design was meant to provide resilience. If one element faltered, others could compensate. The objective was clear: the survival of the state did not depend on a single individual. Khomeini articulated this logic plainly — preserving the Islamic Republic mattered more than preserving any one leader.

All of that machinery is now being activated simultaneously — for the first time in the Islamic Republic’s history under direct military assault on its leadership.

The system faced an early stress test. After President Abolhassan Banisadr was impeached, President Mohammad Ali Rajai and Prime Minister Mohammad Javad Bahonar were assassinated within weeks of each other.

Yet within 50 days, Ali Khamenei was elected president, demonstrating the regime’s capacity to regenerate leadership quickly under extreme pressure. Eight years later, the same logic applied when Khomeini died. Khamenei, lacking both Khomeini’s charisma and senior religious rank, emerged as supreme leader because institutions converged on him, not because succession was predetermined.

The message within the state was unmistakable: the system must outlast individuals. This principle resurfaced after President Ebrahim Raisi died in a helicopter crash in 2024. Constitutional procedures were immediately activated. Authority transferred smoothly, elections were held on schedule and political stability was preserved. Rather than triggering disorder, the episode functioned as a rehearsal for sudden leadership loss.

Iran’s constitution has a specific answer to what happens now. Article 111 provides that if the supreme leader dies or becomes incapacitated, authority transfers immediately to an interim council consisting of the president, the head of the judiciary and a cleric chosen through the Expediency Council.

The aim is continuity, not transformation. While qualifications for the next leader are specified, the constitution leaves room for interpretation rather than imposing a rigid religious pathway. This flexibility allows succession to unfold through negotiation rather than rupture.

There is no fixed timeline for selecting a new leader — a deliberate constitutional ambiguity that now becomes operationally significant. During wartime, an interim arrangement can persist for months. What Washington or other outside observers may interpret as paralysis could in fact be the system functioning exactly as designed.

Formally, the Assembly of Experts votes on succession, but consensus is shaped well before any public decision. Informal filtering narrows viable candidates. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) does not choose the leader, but it exerts influence by defining which risks are unacceptable. Figures perceived as threatening national cohesion or security rarely advance.

With the supreme leader confirmed dead, the IRGC Intelligence Organization is almost certainly already intensifying internal monitoring while ground forces move to prioritize domestic stability. The organization’s interests are both ideological and material, centered on preserving autonomy and economic influence.

At the same time, political legitimacy flows through clerical networks in Qom. Any successor must secure at least tacit acceptance from senior religious figures. The circumstances of Khamenei’s death will matter enormously to succession politics in ways that are not yet fully understood.

A supreme leader killed by American and Israeli missiles during wartime is not merely a dead official — he is a martyr. That narrative will likely elevate candidates associated with ideological hardness and military prowess over those seen as champions of pragmatism or reform.

Iran is frequently portrayed as a state led by one individual. Yet its post-1979 architecture reflects a different logic, forged by revolutionary memory and historical trauma. Khomeini captured this hierarchy in a remark often cited by Iran’s political elite, “Preserving the Islamic Republic is more important than preserving any individual, even one of ultimate religious significance.”

Whether the system can uphold this principle under direct military assault is the question that will define the next phase of the conflict. What is clear is that the succession struggle now underway in Tehran will be treated inside the system less as a moment of collapse than as a test of institutional endurance — one the Islamic Republic’s founders spent decades trying to ensure it would pass.

Rishab Rathi is a journalist at MEAWW News who reports on international affairs and global policy, with a particular focus on South Asia and major power competition in the region. Follow him on LinkedIn here and see his recent works here.