Iran has had only two top leaders since the 1979 revolution – and with the death of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the country’s future looks increasingly uncertain.
The recent assassination of Khamenei by attacks by the United States and Israel also raises domestic questions about the continuation of clerical rule in the Islamic Republic.
For the time being, Iranian state television will announce this on Sunday a transition period will be led by President Masoud Pezeshkian, Judiciary Chief Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei and another official from the country’s Judicial Council.
The complexity of the Iranian government system, the ideological nature of its supporters and the power of the Iranian regime Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) make it difficult to predict what might happen next.
Australian National University expert George Lawson, who specializes in revolutions and radical change, said it was too early to say whether the US-Israeli attacks will mean the end of the regime as we know it.
A US-Israeli “decapitation” strategy to depose the leader will not necessarily spell the downfall of the regime, he said.
“With a regime like this that is so deeply entrenched and so linked to the common destiny, what you really have is a kind of protection pact, or even a kind of survival pact between the constituent parts of the state,” Lawson told SBS News.
“It’s not like a monarchy where you take out the royal family and there’s not much left. This is a state and a regime that are deeply, deeply entrenched and deeply connected.”
Trita Parsi of the American think tank Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft surmised that “the hope on the American and Israeli sides is that the assassination of the supreme leader… is essentially bringing the regime as a whole much closer to the collapse and then the implosion of the regime.”
But Iran expert Dara Conduit from the University of Melbourne does not believe Khamenei’s death means the end of the regime.
Now that the IRGC has hundreds of thousands of members and Iran’s political elite is spread across the economy and all sectors of society, she said the regime is far from being eroded and firmly institutionalized.
“I think there are still far too many people in the Iranian regime who will lose more from the fall of the regime than if there were regime change,” she said.
“So I think this regime will not go down without a fight.”
Will the US send soldiers to Iran?
Conduit said regime change cannot be achieved through airstrikes alone, and does not believe the United States and Israel have the capacity to spark a ground war.
“That requires enormous preparation, a build-up of troops,” she said.
“And I don’t think President Trump has that political support for that kind of waror.”
Only about one in four Americans approve of the military operation, a Reuters/Ipsos poll showed on Sunday.
Nevertheless, Lawson said the Iranian regime’s domestic legitimacy is waning.
“The regime is desperate and extremely unpopular,” he said.
“Any legitimacy they have built up has been systematically eroded. We see this in the amount, quantity and quality [and] scale of the protests that have built up over the years.
“The second point is that legitimacy now really has the power of the weapon left behind.”
Who will replace Khamenei?
Under Iran’s system of vilayat-e fa’ih – the guardianship of the Islamic jurist – the supreme leader must be a cleric.
In theory, the Assembly of Experts, a body of senior ayatollahs elected every eight years, appoints the leader and even has the constitutional power to fire someone. As analysts note, the transfer of power is rarely so procedural in practice.
Conduit said the succession has long been the subject of hushed discussions, given Khamenei’s age and health.
But she added: “It’s a question they’ve never really been able to answer clearly.”
The most obvious candidate, former President Ebrahim Raisi, died in a helicopter crash in 2024.
Names circulating publicly include Ali Larijani, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, although Conduit emphasized that he is “actually not qualified to hold the position because he is not a scholar.”
Whoever emerges may not have public status – as she noted, “Khamenei has never had a large popular following” – but in a system supported by clerical networks and the Revolutionary Guard, charisma may be less decisive than consolidation.
Who is Mohammed Reza Pahlavi?
Speculation about Iran’s future has also revived debate over the monarchy that was overthrown in 1979 – and figures related to it.
US based Iranian opposition figure Reza Pahlavi lived outside Iran before his father was overthrown during the Islamic Revolution and has become a prominent voice in protests abroad.
Associated with monarchist factions that favor the restoration of pre-revolutionary order, the 65-year-old is one of the most recognizable opposition figures outside the country.
But Iran’s opposition is divided between rival groups and ideological factions – including the monarchists who support Pahlavi – and appears to have little organized presence within the Islamic Republic.
Lawson was skeptical that recovery has deep roots in the country.
“There is desperation if the regime there starts to see something different,” he said.
While some protesters have invoked monarchical symbols, Lawson described the idea of installing an outside figure as fraught.
“This is a man who spent almost no part of his life there, who is certainly as American as he is Iranian,” he said, adding: “It is not clear to me that many people want to replace one dictatorship with another.”
He drew parallels with Iraq and Afghanistan, where figures returning from exile struggled for “legitimacy on the ground”.
In that context, Lawson argued, it would be “extremely unlikely” that any attempt to impose a preferred leader would yield lasting authority within Iran.
— With additional reporting by Reuters news agency.
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