Iran After Khamenei: Recalibration or Retrenchment?

The reported death of Ali Khamenei, Iran’s Supreme Leader since 1989, in an Israeli air strike, provides Iran with an opportunity to recalibrate policies that for nearly half a century have alienated the country from the United States and much of the Western world.

In the short term, Khamenei will be replaced by another cleric – likely already chosen – or by a small council of senior officials.

No significant policy changes can occur while U.S. and Israeli bombs are still falling on the country. But in the longer term, Iranian leaders may acknowledge the failure of Khamenei’s “resistance” strategy to protect the country from foreign attacks and to govern in a way that wins support from the Iranian people.

It is not clear whether U.S. officials or intermediaries have already reached out to any of Khamenei’s potential successors and proposed a path forward. President Donald Trump has issued only the vaguest of suggestions, urging Iranians to use the opportunity of U.S. and Israeli strikes to rise up and remove the regime in the wake of the attacks. His best bet for change, however, may lie within the system, among pragmatists who have sought détente with Washington in the past. In this way, he could follow the example of Venezuela, where following the U.S. removal of President Nicolas Maduro, Vice President Delcy Rodriguez is cooperating with the United States.

One candidate is Ali Larijani, the head of Iran’s Supreme Council of National Security, a veteran member of the establishment who according to some accounts, has already been essentially governing in Khamenei’s stead. Larijani headed the same council 20 years ago when he sought talks with then U.S. national security adviser Stephen Hadley, as I reported in my book on U.S.-Iran relations. He also provided crucial parliamentary support to the Iranian government that negotiated the 2015 nuclear deal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), that Trump unilaterally quit in 2018 during his first term. The son of a famous ayatollah and the brother of a former judiciary chief, Larijani, 67, has been in the thick of the Islamic Republic’s politics for more than three decades.

Other potential interlocutors are the speaker of the parliament, Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, and the former president and national security adviser Hassan Rouhani, on whose watch the JCPOA was reached. There may be other figures within the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) or the regular military that could emerge in the wake of the current crisis.

There are no guarantees that whoever follows Khamenei will be an improvement in terms of Iran’s domestic or foreign policies. But the huge popular protests of earlier this year that were brutally suppressed at the cost of thousands of Iranian lives, on top of the collapse of Iran’s network of regional allies following the Israeli retaliation for the Hamas attacks of Oct. 7, 2023, have exposed the Islamic Republic’s vulnerability more dramatically than at any time since the Iraqi invasion of the country in 1980.

Iranian society long ago evolved beyond the restrictions of the Islamic Republic and the cheers of some Iranians as U.S. and Israeli bombs fell is telling. Those who care about the Iranian people have to hope for a better future for the country even as they oppose a U.S. and Israeli military operation that has no justification in international law and no authorization from the U.S. Congress.

This article was published by The Stimson Centre on 28 February 2026 and is reprinted with the kind permission of the author - Iran After Khamenei: Recalibration or Retrenchment? • Stimson Center

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