Iran’s announcement of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s replacement after his death by US-Israeli bombing came at an unexpectedly rapid pace. Within days, the Assembly of Experts appointed his son, Mojtaba Khamenei, as supreme leader — a smooth transition, at least in theory.
But the speed of that decision raises a question far more intriguing than who would take over. Does it actually matter who sits in the supreme leader’s chair?
Political systems often reveal their true structure during moments of crisis. The days after Khamenei’s death made one thing clear: the titles on office doors matter less than the guns behind them.
In Iran, the institution capable of imposing order when everything else begins to unravel is not the clerical establishment – it is the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Iran has operated under an odd duality for years. The clerics, who uphold a revolutionary ideology based on Shiite theology, are on one side. The Revolutionary Guards, on the other hand, are a vast military-economic network that has developed into the nation’s most powerful organization.
Although related, the two are not the same. One confers legitimacy, while the other provides muscle. The elevation of Mojtaba Khamenei illustrates this dynamic perfectly. Formally, the Assembly of Experts selected him. Informally, the choice bears the fingerprints of the Revolutionary Guards.
The decision was less an ecclesiastical judgment than a strategic calculation. Mojtaba is not merely the son of the late leader; he is a figure closely aligned with the security establishment – a veteran of the Iran–Iraq War whose political instincts lean toward discipline and force rather than clerical debate.
The Soviet parallel is instructive. The Communist Party supplied ideological legitimacy for decades, but it was the KGB and the military that determined who actually governed — a lesson the Guards absorbed long ago.
Iran’s system is of a similar mold: the clerics supply the doctrine and the Guards enforce it. Seen in that light, Mojtaba’s elevation resembles less a dynastic transfer than a managed consolidation.
Yet even that interpretation may exaggerate the importance of the man. Iran today faces pressures that no single leader has ever faced.
The country is in the middle of a war that has already decimated much of its senior leadership, ranging from commanders to ministers to intelligence officials. In the first days of the US-Israeli conflict, several of the state’s highest-ranking figures were killed by airstrikes. Continuity plans exist in every government, but few are designed for losses on such a scale.
Iran’s supreme leader holds ultimate authority, yet decisions traditionally emerge from consultation with factions led by presidents, jurists, commanders and clerics. It is messy, complicated and occasionally dysfunctional, but for decades it has functioned without major rupture.
When missiles fall and leadership circles shrink, factional consultation becomes a luxury. Authority gravitates toward the institutions capable of acting quickly and with force. In Iran’s case, that means the Revolutionary Guards.
They command the missiles, control major sectors of the economy and oversee networks of regional militias stretching from Lebanon to Yemen. If the state is forced into a prolonged wartime posture, the Guards will inevitably become even more dominant. This reality also explains why Mojtaba may prove less powerful than his father.
Ali Khamenei spent nearly 40 years building a delicate equilibrium between competing factions. He mastered the art of playing institutions off one another, ensuring that no single group accumulated too much power. Mojtaba inherits little of that authority. His legitimacy rests largely on the support of the very institution he must theoretically supervise.
The Revolutionary Guards themselves are not monolithic. Generational rivalries exist within their ranks. Some commanders favor aggressive regional expansion; others emphasize internal stability.
Israeli strikes over the past several years have killed numerous senior officers, accelerating leadership turnover within the organization. New commanders have brought new priorities. In such an environment, factional competition can intensify rather than moderate. The result may be a system in which the supreme leader serves more as a symbolic center than an independent decision-maker.
Iran has experienced similar moments before. After the death of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1989, many analysts predicted the Islamic Republic would fracture. Instead, the system adapted as institutions recalibrated. Khamenei—then considered a relatively weak successor—gradually consolidated power over the following decades.
But historical parallels only go so far. Iran today faces pressures that the early republic never confronted simultaneously: crippling sanctions, widespread economic discontent, a hostile regional environment, a population increasingly skeptical of clerical rule and now unrelenting airstrikes by the US and Israel.
Protests in recent months and years have revealed how thin the regime’s social legitimacy has become. Demonstrations that began over economic grievances quickly evolved into calls for the end of the theocratic system itself. The government has responded with force, yet repression rarely solves and only postpones deeper problems.
Khamenei’s assassination has therefore created a potent moment. Some Iranians reportedly celebrated his death by bombing. Others remained silent, uncertain how events might unfold. Outside the country, opposition figures such as Reza Pahlavi have urged citizens to challenge the regime. Foreign governments have openly speculated about regime change.
But revolutions rarely emerge on command, certainly not in Iran. The Islamic Republic still possesses formidable instruments of control embedded in surveillance networks and enforced by loyal security forces.
Economic interests are tied directly to the survival of the regime. Those structures cannot be dismantled overnight, especially while the country remains engaged in an external conflict. So does Mojtaba actually matter?
In the immediate sense, probably not as much as headlines might suggest. Iran does not require a supreme leader to launch missiles or coordinate battlefield operations. The machinery of war operates through institutions that will continue functioning regardless of who occupies the clerical apex.
In the longer term, however, leadership will still matter, although perhaps in subtler ways than under his father. What Iran’s power brokers have done is buy time — for the war to stabilize, for the Guards to consolidate and for a new equilibrium to emerge from the wreckage of the old one.
Whether Mojtaba proves to be a transitional figure or more durable, like his father, will depend less on his own ambitions than on whether the system around him holds. That is not a question anyone in Tehran — or Washington, for that matter — can answer yet.
M A Hossain is a senior journalist and international affairs analyst based in Bangladesh