by Eric Lob, Florida International University, [This article first appeared in The Conversation, republished with permission]

The killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Feb. 28, 2026, set off the process of selecting a new supreme leader. It is only the second such transition in the Islamic Republic’s 47-year history and the first since the ailing Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini transferred power to Khamenei in June 1989.

As stipulated in Article 111 of the Iranian Constitution, a three-person Interim Leadership Council was created on March 1, 2026. It consists of President Masoud Pezeshkian, Chief Justice Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Eje’i and Ayatollah Alireza Arafi, who is also a candidate for supreme leader.

The council has temporarily assumed the duties of the supreme leader until a new one is appointed by the Assembly of Experts – an elected body of 88 clerics. The assembly is expected to swiftly elect the next supreme leader, especially with Iran being in a state of war.

Assuming it can be carried out, a swift succession is meant to signal to domestic dissidents and external enemies alike that the regime – or ruling system, nezam – remains in place. During the assembly’s first meeting to select a new supreme leader on March 3, Israel bombed its building in the city of Qom. The building was evacuated before the strike, and no casualties were reported.

Some media reports have portrayed Khamenei’s son, Mojtaba, as a top contender, even though he lacks the status of a senior cleric. Although his is just one of a number of names that has been talked of as a potential successor.

Israel’s defense minister, Israel Katz, said that Israel would kill any successor to Khamenei that is selected. Nevertheless, the Assembly of Experts appears determined to carry out its constitutional duty and appoint a new supreme leader.

As a scholar of Iranian politics, I argue that the succession process, irrespective of its outcome, has never been free or transparent.

The history of succession

The Iranian supreme leader serves for life and is the highest religious and political authority in the Islamic Republic.

He is the commander in chief of the armed forces and oversees other key institutions, such as the judicial branch and state media.

He also supervises the Guardian Council, which has the power to vet electoral candidates and veto parliamentary legislation.

In this capacity, the supreme leader has the final say on foreign policy and different areas of domestic policy.

The first leader of the Islamic Republic – Khomeini – ruled between 1979 and 1989. In addition to being a revolutionary and charismatic figure, Khomeini was a grand ayatollah and a “source of emulation,” or marja’ al-taqlid.

A grand ayatollah and source of emulation is among a select few of the highest-ranking clerics. He is considered a “sign of God” in Twelver Shiism, the largest branch of Shiism and the state religion of Iran. A grand ayatollah and source of emulation has the authority to make legal decisions for his lay followers and for lower-ranking clerics in Iran and the wider Shiite world.

There are several dozen grand ayatollahs and sources of emulation in the world. Most of them reside and run seminaries in the holy cities of Qom in Iran and Najaf in Iraq. Shiites can choose which one they want to follow as a senior figure of the faith, making the institution decentralized.

The electoral facade

The members of the Assembly of Experts serve eight-year terms and are authorized to elect, supervise and, if necessary, dismiss the supreme leader. Article 111 of the Iranian Constitution grants the assembly the authority to remove the supreme leader if he is deemed incapable or unqualified politically and religiously. However, it is unlikely to do so given that its members are first vetted by the Guardian Council before being elected by a popular vote of Iranian men and women ages 18 and older.

It should be noted that the members of the Guardian Council are appointed by the supreme leader and the chief justice, or head of the judiciary, who is also appointed by the supreme leader.

Therefore, through the council, the supreme leader approves the candidates. They are potentially elected to a body that oversees him, making the process far from free and fair.

In the last election for the Assembly of Experts in March 2024, which had a historically low voter turnout of about 40%, the Guardian Council disqualified many candidates.

This was particularly the case with moderates and reformists, who tended to oppose the supreme leader on various issues. For this reason, the assembly has not been known to seriously supervise or challenge the supreme leader, and its proceedings have remained strictly confidential or closed to the public.

The 1989 succession

As Khomeini approached the end of his life in 1989, the constitution was amended so that a lower-ranking cleric like Khamenei could assume the position.

As a seminary student of Khomeini who was more interested in politics than religion, Khamenei ranked below an ayatollah. Within the Shiite clerical hierarchy, and like other Islamic scholars who studied under an ayatollah, he earned the title Hojjat al-Eslam, or “proof of Islam.” He possessed the foundational knowledge of Islam without the advanced and independent reasoning – ijtihad – required for an ayatollah.

After being appointed to succeed Khomeini, Khamenei’s rank was elevated overnight to a grand ayatollah. The reason for the appointment was that Khamenei was a longtime loyalist and regime insider, even though he lacked the charismatic and religious authority of Khomeini.

Until 1989, Grand Ayatollah Hussein-Ali Montazeri – a prominent theologian and revolutionary leader – was expected to take over as the supreme leader. That year, however, he was ultimately passed over by Khomeini and detained by the Revolutionary Guard.

Montazeri succumbed to this fate because he had questioned Khamenei’s qualifications as supreme leader and condemned the regime for its repression, especially the execution of thousands of political prisoners in 1988 by a committee of four prosecutors. After continuing to criticize Khamenei in 1997, Montazeri was placed under house arrest under the pretext of protecting him from hard-liners. In 2003 he was released by the reformist president Mohammad Khatami, who had received pressure from parliamentarians to do so.

The situation with succession today

For years, rumors circulated that Mojtaba Khamenei, the son of the recently slain supreme leader, could be named the next one. However, such a scenario seemed unlikely during the lifetime of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who openly opposed it.

He did so to avoid antagonizing parts of the political and religious establishment that categorically reject hereditary or dynastic succession. After all, the concept is considered antithetical or anathema to the Iranian Revolution, which deposed the monarchy led by the shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, in 1979.

From a political perspective, Mojtaba has never held public office. By contrast, his father served as Iran’s third president between 1981 and 1989.

Religiously speaking, Mojtaba – like his father before he became the supreme leader – is only a midranking cleric, though he teaches theology at the renowned Qom Seminary. As with his father, and for political purposes, the Assembly of Experts would have to elevate Mojtaba’s status to a grand ayatollah, even without the requisite religious credentials.

It is worth mentioning that Mojtaba is being considered for supreme leader alongside some seniors clerics whose credentials come closer to that of a grand ayatollah. Alireza Arafi, whose name has also come up as a potential successor, attained the rank of an ayatollah, or mujtahid, after publishing over 20 books and articles on Islamic jurisprudence and philosophy.

That said, in 2022 his religious qualifications were called into question. That year he joined the Assembly of Experts without taking the required written exam administered by the Guardian Council, even though he had been a member of it since 2019. Instead, he was appointed to the assembly by Khamenei through a legal loophole and without being elected. This incident indicated that Arafi was favored by Khamenei and may have an advantage as a candidate for supreme leader.

Another candidate, Ayatollah Mohammad Mehdi Mirbagheri, is an Islamic philosopher and theoretician. In this capacity, he serves as the head of the Qom Academy of Islamic Sciences and has been a member of the Assembly of Experts since 2016.

Yet another contender is Ayatollah Hashem Hosseini Bushehri. He was educated in the Qom Seminary and became the Friday prayer leader of the city. Alongside Arafi, Bushehri serves as a deputy chairman of the Assembly of Experts.

As the current conflict continues, and even with the Interim Leadership Council in place, the Assembly of Experts is under immense pressure to rapidly rule on succession to preserve the system.

Mojtaba Khamenei’s election, as I see it, would continue the trend of prioritizing political preferences over religious principles that started in 1989.

This piece includes material from an earlier one published on May 23, 2024.

Eric Lob, Associate Professor of Politics and International Relations, Florida International University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.