A wartime succession in Iran: why the IRGC backed Mojtaba Khamenei
The Guards want a leader who can both hold the system together and decide between escalation and a climbdown.
A Supreme Leader has been killed. A son has been chosen. And the Revolutionary Guards are driving the process.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed on Saturday morning in US and Israeli air strikes. On Tuesday, according to exclusive information obtained by Iran International, Iran’s Assembly of Experts, under pressure from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), chose his son, Mojtaba Khamenei, as the next Supreme Leader. The decision has not been made public and is expected to be announced after Ali Khamenei is buried.
This is not a routine succession. It is a wartime decision shaped by the security state, and it raises serious questions about constitutional procedure. The priority appears to be speed and control, as the Islamic Republic faces attacks from outside and a leadership vacuum at the top.
Why the IRGC pushed Mojtaba
The IRGC needed two things at the same time: control and legitimacy.
Control means keeping the chain of command intact, preventing splits at the top, keeping the security forces coordinated, and stopping a scramble for power. In this crisis, the IRGC’s first priority is internal stability.
Legitimacy matters too, but not in a broad national sense. It means legitimacy inside the regime’s core base: hard-line politicians, the security institutions, and the loyal networks that still see the Islamic Republic as “their” state. In that narrow world, Mojtaba has something others do not. He can claim direct continuity with Khamenei, and the core base can accept him without feeling the system has broken.
That combination is why the IRGC chose him.
Mojtaba also has long-standing ties to the IRGC, going back decades, and deep relationships across its command networks. For years, he has been a key channel between his father and the Guard’s leadership. That gives him a rare position. He is close to the security core, but also linked to the civilian and clerical leadership that depends on it.
He has also effectively run the Supreme Leader’s office, the Beit, for at least the past two decades, and is widely seen as Ali Khamenei’s closest confidant. The Beit is not just a state within the state. It is the core of the state itself. In practice, Iran’s elected government and president are often a façade, with little real power. Real authority has long sat in the Beit, which controls key security, political, and financial levers. That is why this apparatus is now protecting itself, and why it does not want an outsider coming in and taking control.
The Islamic Republic at a fork in the road
The Islamic Republic now faces two broad directions.
One is to keep fighting, stay defiant, absorb more damage, and try to outlast the attacks. That would likely mean tighter internal control, the dispersal of forces and assets, and heavier reliance on asymmetric pressure, including missiles, drones, proxies, and covert operations, while signalling that the state will not negotiate under fire.
The other is to step back and accept major concessions to stop the war and reduce pressure. That would mean giving up key pillars of Iran’s regional and military posture in return for a halt to attacks and some easing of pressure.
Mojtaba is well placed to pursue either path.
If the system chooses a bitter deal, it needs someone who can own it and stop the hardcore from turning on the leadership. If it chooses to fight on, it needs someone who can keep the IRGC united and keep the security state functioning under sustained attack. That is the political function of this succession.
The main question now is whether Israel and the US will target him immediately or give him time to make that choice. If they strike him straight away, it will be hard to avoid one conclusion: the campaign is no longer about pressure or deterrence. It is about regime change. If they hold back, the focus shifts to Mojtaba’s next move and whether he chooses escalation or a climbdown.
The problem of blood and revenge
Any agreement with Donald Trump was always difficult for Ali Khamenei. In Tehran’s narrative, Trump sought Iran’s “surrender” and had the blood of Qasem Soleimani on his hands. Khamenei repeatedly ruled out reconciliation and called for qisas, a concept in Islamic law meaning retribution, often understood as “life for life.”
For his successor, the burden is heavier. Trump now carries not only Soleimani’s blood, but also Ali Khamenei’s. That makes any compromise far harder to sell, and it also raises the domestic stakes for any decision to escalate.
Mojtaba has one advantage inside the system. He can present himself as the person entitled to decide what comes next. If the leadership chooses to fight on, he can frame it as continuity, duty, and retaliation. If it chooses to pause revenge and prioritise survival, he can frame it as a decision made by the heir and the family, not as a humiliation forced from the outside.
Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder and first Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic, set the guiding rule in a line that has the force of a fatwa in Shia political doctrine: “Preserving the system is the highest duty.” In plain terms, it means the survival of the Islamic Republic comes before almost everything else. As vali-e dam, the next of kin with the right to demand retribution, Mojtaba can argue that he also has the right to set it aside if the state’s survival requires it. That is how he can ask the regime’s core base to accept restraint, and present it not as retreat, but as obedience to a higher obligation.
What stepping back would mean in practice
If Mojtaba chooses regime survival over confrontation, the price will be high. A serious de-escalation would likely mean accepting Trump’s demands, including:
Ending enrichment as a national project, not just pausing it
Accepting long-term, enforceable limits on missile range
Reducing or abandoning the proxy network, not just rebranding it
Ending the policy of confrontation with Israel
For Mojtaba, accepting these would not just be a policy shift. It would mean dismantling his father’s 37-year legacy in a single afternoon.
Without real and verifiable change in these areas, the US and Israel would have little reason to stop.
Even then, a deal would not solve the regime’s deeper problem at home. Legitimacy inside Iranian society is badly damaged, especially after the January massacre, and the state is widely seen as corrupt, incompetent, and violent. A ceasefire might stop the bombs, but it would not stop the political decay.
Where this leaves the Islamic Republic
If Mojtaba keeps the hard line while the world’s most powerful military is striking alongside the region’s most capable one, the window for a new leader to consolidate may be measured in days, not months.
If he chooses a climbdown, the war may stop, but the inheritance remains bleak. He would be taking ownership of painful concessions that undo much of his father’s legacy, while inheriting a state that is badly broken. The Islamic Republic is facing something close to a failed-state reality: an economy in severe distress, hollowed-out institutions, and public hostility so high that normal governance becomes hard to sustain. A halt in attacks would not restore capacity, trust, or authority.
Either way, Mojtaba Khamenei begins in the ruins of his father’s world. The Islamic Republic’s options are all expensive, its survival is no longer guaranteed, and for the first time in forty years, time is the one thing Tehran cannot buy.
This article is also available on the Iran International website.
An outstanding piece. Thanks