Who will lead Iran after Khamenei’s death? Key contenders emerge

as The White House confirmed on SundayThe leadership of the Islamic Republic of Iran has contacted the United States requesting talks. The list of potential successors to replace Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed on Saturday in an Israeli air strike, includes his son and former advisers.

Since the founding of the Islamic Republic in 1979 under the leadership of the anti-American Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, this will be only the second time a new supreme leader has been chosen.

Among Khamenei’s potential successors is a list of hard-line anti-Western extremists who, like Khamenei, are determined to destroy Israel and continue exporting the Islamic revolution.

Ali Larijani warned Trump that American intervention would “destroy America’s interests” after the president’s protest statements. (STR/Xinhua via Getty Images)

Ali Larijani

One possible successor is regime loyalist Ali Larijani, secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, who is said to have carried out Khamenei’s plan to massacre more than 30,000 Iranians. In protest against his regime In January.

He threatened to retaliate in a statement on Saturday, writing: “We will make the evil Zionist and American criminals regret it,” adding that “the brave soldiers and the great Iranian nation will provide an unforgettable lesson to the persecutors of the international system bound to hell.”

In January, the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) issued Larijani is punished As one of the “architects of the Iranian regime’s brutal repression of peaceful demonstrators.” The statement added, “Larijani was one of the first Iranian leaders to call for violence in response to the legitimate demands of the Iranian people.”

Ali Larijani during a press conference in Tehran, Iran. (Hingama Fahimi/AFP via Getty Images)

Larijani was speaker of parliament in the Islamic Republic and, like Khamenei, engaged in Holocaust denial. Larijani was also the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a terrorist organization designated by the United States and the European Union.

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Bani Sabti, an expert on Iranian affairs at the Institute for National Security Studies in Israel, cast doubt on reports claiming that Larijani is the most likely to be the next president. supreme commander. He told Fox News Digital: “Larijani is not a cleric, but he can help some candidates who are clerics behind the scenes, such as his brother Muhammad Javad Larijani, who was head of the judiciary.”

Muhammad Javad Larijani

Secretary-General of the Supreme Council for Human Rights of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Mohammad Javad Larijani, attends a meeting with foreign ambassadors to Iran, on June 24, 2019, in the capital, Tehran. (Atta Kinari/AFP via Getty Images)

Muhammad Javad Larijani called for the destruction of Israel and denied the Holocaust. He was previously Secretary General of the Supreme Council for Human Rights in Iran.

As a close advisor to the late Supreme Leader, he defended stoning for adultery, declaring that he protected “family values” as part of Islamic law.

Mojtaba Khamenei

An archive photo shows Mojtaba Khamenei, son of the late Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, while attending a demonstration marking Quds Day in Tehran. (Mortaza Nikoubazel/Nour Photo via Getty Images)

Another alternative to Khamenei could be his second son, Mojtaba, who works closely with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. The first Trump administration imposed sanctions on him in 2019.

According to the Treasury Department sanctions, “the Supreme Leader delegated part of his leadership responsibilities to Mojtaba Khamenei, who worked closely with the leader of the revolution.” Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps– The Quds Force (IRGC-QF) as well as the Basij Resistance Force (Basij) to advance his father’s destabilizing regional ambitions and repressive domestic goals.

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Iran International newspaper reported that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard is seeking to find a quick replacement for Khamenei. Iran’s Islamic regime imposes an elected body of 88 senior clerics – the Assembly of Experts – to choose the next leader.

Iranian worshipers raise their hands as a sign of unity with Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, during an anti-Israel march to condemn Israeli attacks on Iran, in downtown Tehran, Iran, on June 20, 2025. (Mortaza Nikoubazel/Nour Photo via Getty Images)

Ali Reda Arfi

Cleric and jurist Ali Reza Arfi, 67, who is part of a three-person interim leadership council to run Iran, may also be Khamenei’s successor.

According to the US group United Against a Nuclear Iran, Arfi has promised “death” to protesters who knock on the turbans of Iranian Islamic clerics. “Those who attack the turbans of clerics should know that the turban will become their shroud,” Orfi said.

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People watch smoke rising on the horizon after an explosion in Tehran, Iran, Saturday, February 28, 2026. (AP Photo) (AP photo)

Ayatollah Muhammad Mehdi Mirbagheri

Extremist Ayatollah Mohammad Mehdi Mirbagheri is also a contender to succeed Khamenei. Mirbagheri calls for fighting the “infidels” and defeating them.

Mirbagheri quoted Iran’s first supreme leader, Ruhollah Khomeini, as saying that the “new Islam-based culture in the world” would mean “hardship, martyrdom and hunger” and that the Iranian people “voluntarily chose” to embrace this activism, according to Iran International. Mirbagheri’s religious credentials position him as a natural alternative to Khamenei.

Other names

Another religious successor to Khamenei being discussed is Hassan Khomeini, a grandson Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. He is the custodian of Khomeini’s shrine. He is 53 years old, which is young by the Islamic Republic’s standards for leadership.

United Against Nuclear Iran has classified Ayatollah Seyyed Hashem Hosseini Bushehri, born in 1956 in Bardakhon, Bushehr, as a second-tier candidate to replace Khamenei.

Cars burn in a street during a protest against the collapse of the currency in Tehran, Iran, January 8, 2026. (Stringer/Wana (West Asia News Agency) via Reuters)

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“Bushehr is a strong figure in the religious and academic fields in Iran. He began his theological education in Bushehr before moving to Qom to continue his studies.

According to UANI, in 2024, Bushehri urged Iranian women to “address issues such as the status of women’s rights in Western societies and the shortcomings that exist in this area in the West,” which would prevent “the enemy [the West]“So they don’t have the opportunity to challenge us [Iran]”.

“I don’t think Israel and the United States should allow them to choose the next leader,” said Tehran-born Iranian analyst Sabti. He compared the successor system to agitation When Israel eliminates a Hamas terrorist leader, he is quickly replaced by a new leader.

TEHRAN, IRAN – FEBRUARY 28: Smoke rises over the city center after the Israeli military launched a second wave of air strikes on Iran on February 28, 2026. (Fatima Bahrami/Anadolu via Getty Images)

There is a need to “prevent the selection of the next leader,” he said. “We may be able to eliminate the next leader even before he is chosen.”

He said it was important to “break the system” to prevent terrorism from continuing. “It is bad for the Arab countries and Israel if the regime remains as it is” in Iran.

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Al-Sabti said that the regime can continue to build its illegal nuclear weapons and ballistic missile program and sponsor terrorism, adding that it is better to dissolve the regime and “introduce a new regime.”

He concluded that regime change requires “talking to the people,” and “maybe it’s time for them to go out and make a good revolution.”

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