After Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's death, who is running Iran's regime at this moment? - analysis

Vahidi was announced overnight by the IRGC as its new leader.

Given the IRGC's centrality to running the regime's security forces, Vahidi being its new leader could position him as the current reigning authority for the regime.

This would be ironic because Vahidi was not a well-known name or in the Iranian security forces' top 10 until very recently. He only became the IRGC deputy chief in December 2025, around two months ago.

Most of Iran's top leadership was killed in June 2025, and most of its current top leaders were also in some sense newer to their posts.

Vahidi was even below them, having been the Interior Minister from 2021 to 2024.

However, he had also been the defense minister from 2009-2013, and served in other relatively high posts and has been an IRGC commander since the late 1980s.

Another candidate could be Ali Larijani.

Larijani has had ups and downs with Khamenei, having been an IRGC commander, speaker of parliament, and a national security council chief, but then was disqualified from running for Iranian president to pave the way for Ebrahim Raisi's election in 2021

However, in recent months, Larijani made a comeback as one of the older and still living top advisers to Khamenei, following so many top officials being killed in June 2025, and became Khamenei's number two, running the country's day-to-day security affairs and nuclear negotiations with the US.

Earlier in the current military campaign, some leaked hat Larijani may have been killed, but late Saturday, he appeared to tweet responses to the current conflict, and he was not named by the IDF late Saturday night as having been killed on a list of top assassinated officials.

What both Vahidi and Larijani have in common is that in normal circumstances, they would not necessarily be in the running to replace Khamenei.

Rather, a group of ayatollahs and clerics would meet to appoint one of their own to replace Khamenei.

As of 2024, when Raisi died in a helicopter crash, the obvious successor to Ali Khamenei, one for years, but who had seemed to take a back seat to Raisi, would have been Khamenei's son, Mojtaba Hosseini Khamenei, who is in his mid-50s.

Though Ali Khamenei's son-in-law, daughter, and grandson have been killed, no one has reported Mojtaba as having been killed.

The Ayatollah's son is highly ambitious, aggressive, close to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and a force to be reckoned with.

But he would need to get over two huge obstacles: the founder of the Islamic Republic, Ruhollah Khomeini, rejected the idea of family dynasties as un-Islamic.

Incidentally, rumours are circulating to this day that six years into his rule, Khamenei had Khomeini's son killed by poisoning.

So that raises the question as to whether Khamenei would have been loyal to his public statements against dynasties and to his predecessor and mentor's statements along those lines, or whether he would have worried more about his son's power, and even his safety should someone else take over.

But with Ali Khamenei dead, his son Mojtaba's status may be uncertain.

Iran expert at INSS and at the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, Raz Zimmt, told the Jerusalem Post in 2024 that there were two other dark horse possibilities, who had more of a chance with Raisi dead.

He named Alireza Arafi and Mohsen Qomi, who are not well-known globally, but within Iran, they serve on the country's top body for selecting the supreme leader, known as the Assembly of Experts.

Both have strong religious credentials and would continue the role of the clergy atop the country's pyramid of power.

Arafi is also a member of the Guardian Council, which decides who can run for all other national offices, and was formerly in charge of the country's universities.

Qomi has been the number one or two official of multiple special offices close to Khamenei, and is also an expert in international relations.

Arafi has been described by some as more interested in technology, modernity, and innovation than many other ayatollahs, but in other contexts has come off as having a very tribal, almost medieval antagonism to Christians, Sunnis, atheists, and anyone different than his version of Shiism.

In addition, Arafi is said to have been pushed by Khamenei onto the Assembly of Experts despite potentially not having passed certain clerical tests that most members need to pass.

Clearly, both are quite close to Khamenei, and Zimmt thought in 2024 that it was unlikely that Khamenei would retract his opposition to dynasties.

But the wild card possibility that a top member of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, such as Vahidi, has or will take over, is much higher with the regime needing to replace Khamenei mid-conflict and possibly with no ability for the cleric's council to meet to carry out an "orderly" transition to another cleric.

However, this would be more than just a succession as it could signal the end of the Islamic Revolution and the country's transition to more of a standard dictatorship or authoritarian regime, with merely a religious flavor - and that is even if the current US-Israeli efforts to topple the wider regime fail.

If Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian is still alive, with no reports that he is dead, he could also eventually take over, but he has little security background, making him less likely in the current security-infused context.

The situation may also be highly dynamic, as whoever takes control now may be assassinated shortly, re-scrambling any calculations, which is part of the US-Israeli plan to try to topple the entire Islamic regime in favor of the more Western-oriented protesters.