Here is who really leads Iran with the Supreme Leader MIA and top leaders killed
Seventeen days – that’s how long the last leader of Iran lived.
Ali Larijani recently became head of the repressive Islamic state after Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed by an Israeli missile fired from space on Feb. 28,
Larijani was killed on Tuesday in targeted strikes that also took out the head of Iran’s brutal Basij Revolutionary Guard Corps.
They are the latest hardliners to be killed since the war began. Others include the head of Iran’s National Defense Council, the IRGC commander, the defense minister and the head of intelligence.
Since then, Iran’s clerics have chosen Khamenei’s “probably gay” son Mojtaba Khamenei as the new supreme leader – but he has not been seen in public since the strike that killed his father, wife and son.
Even President Trump said he is not sure if Mojtaba is alive or dead.
All this begs the question – who really runs Iran? The answer, according to observers of the Islamic Republic, appears, increasingly, as the IRGC’s hard-line commanders, who will choose more hard-liners.
Just as Khamenei was replaced by another Khamenei, Larijani may be replaced by another Larijani, experts told The Post.
Ali Larijani’s brother, Sadiq Larijani, is among the favorites to replace his brother and lead Iran while Mojtaba remains hidden from the public eye, said Yigal Carmon, president of the Middle East Media Research Institute in Israel.
“He may become a member because the IRGC will want someone who is strong. They need someone who will go with them, who will work with them,” said Carmon.
“He is not a competitor, he will work with them,” he added.
Janatan Sayeh, an Iran analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, also said Sadiq would be the best choice given his role as chairman of Tehran’s Expediency Discernment Council, a body that advises the supreme leader.
His position as grand ayatollah, whose father clashed with Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, may also have contributed to his standing as a devoted member of the Islamic state.
Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Larijani’s main rival, may also take over because of his strong ties to the IRGC, said Khosro Isfahani, director of research at the Washington-based National Union for Democracy in Iran (NUFDI).
Ghalibaf has served as commander of the IRGC’s air force and has appeared regularly on Iranian state television leading the parliament chanting “Death to America! Death to Israel!”
Ghalibaf is widely seen as the man who acts as a liaison between Mojtaba, the state office, and the IRGC.
The likelihood of Iran selecting a moderate to replace Larijani is slim given the IRGC’s ability to name successors during a war with Israel and the US.
Technically, a three-man council has been appointed to lead the nation of 90 million people after the death of the great leader. They are the President of Iran Masoud Pezeshkian; Ayatollah Alireza Aarafi, head of Iran’s Guardian Council, a group of clerics and lawyers tasked with ensuring that political and electoral candidates are sufficiently Muslim; and Justice Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei, head of the courts.
But all three men are drawn from Iran’s political ranks — and the real power in recent years has been with the IRGC, according to observers.
Ali Larijani had risen to become the second most powerful man in Iran before the war – after only the supreme leader.
He served as a moderate with deep roots in Tehran’s political and economic environment, making it difficult to find a replacement, said Mona Yacoubian, director of the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ Middle East Program.
“We are seeing a continued trend of an Iranian rump regime that is strong and closely linked to the IRGC,” he added.
Larijani’s title allowed him to effectively govern Iran even though the Islamic Republic named Mojtaba Khamenei as its new leader last week.
Larijani was previously considered a moderate, but in recent years he took charge of Iran’s nuclear negotiations and led a brutal campaign against protesters, who killed thousands of people in the streets, and was tortured and killed in Iranian prisons.
The new commander of the IRGC, Gen. Ahmad Vahid, pushed the Assembly of Experts of Iran to vote for Mojtaba as a way of ignoring the US and Israel and showing Tehran’s hostility to the West, the New York Times reported.
The crackdown came despite Larijani and other allies cracking down on hardline figures like Aarafi, former Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, and Hassan Khomeini, the grandson of the democracy’s founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
Follow The Post’s coverage of the United States airstrikes in Iran:
Like Mojtaba’s appointment, the IRGC will likely be strategic in selecting Larijani’s successor to serve their needs, said Vali Nasr, a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.
“For all the US and Israeli killings [are] engineering a major strengthening of Iran’s leadership. It will create a dark future for Iran, Iranians, the region and ultimately make it more difficult for the US to break away from the endless conflicts in the region,” Nasr wrote in X.
But whoever takes over could face a short life if they aren’t willing to negotiate with Trump to end the war.
“As senior officials watch figures like Khamenei and Larijani being eliminated, they realize that the personal risk associated with being in high office in the Islamic Republic is greatly increased,” Isfahani said.
“Such operations will make the state officials realize that they have two options: total extermination or total surrender.”
