{"id":21064,"date":"2026-03-04T13:50:42","date_gmt":"2026-03-04T13:50:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/?p=21064"},"modified":"2026-03-04T13:50:42","modified_gmt":"2026-03-04T13:50:42","slug":"who-is-irans-next-leader","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/?p=21064","title":{"rendered":"Who Is Iran\u2019s Next Leader?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n Reading Time:<\/span> 3<\/span> minutes<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Iran\u2019s Supreme Leader\u00a0Ali Khamenei is dead, and there is no clear successor to take his place.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cThe supreme leader made sure there was never any sort of heir apparent,\u201d Victoria Coates, former deputy national security adviser to President Donald Trump, explained to The Daily Signal.<\/p>\n

This content is supported by your donations.
Give today.<\/h4>\n

\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

The Islamic Republic of Iran was established in 1979 following the Iranian Revolution. Since then, the country has only had two supreme leaders\u2014Ruhollah Khomeini, who died in 1989, and Ali Khamenei, who was killed over the weekend during the joint U.S.-Israel operation against the\u00a0Iranian regime.\n<\/p>\n

In Iran, the supreme leader is chosen by a body of 88 clerics known as the Assembly of Experts. Until a new leader is chosen, or another authority takes power, the Islamic Republic\u2019s constitution gives power to a three-member council, which today includes Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, Chief Justice Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei, and Ayatollah Alireza Arafi.\n<\/p>\n

A concern right now, according to Gregg Roman, the executive director of the Middle East Forum, is another \u201cone man band\u201d will fill the power vacuum in Iran.\n<\/p>\n

The son of the former shah of Iran, Reza Pahlavi, is certainly a figure to watch, Roman explained during a phone call with The Daily Signal from the\u00a0bomb shelter\u00a0of his home in Tel Aviv as sirens sounded in the background.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cI think Pahlavi, he has a role in this, but I think that the way in which he approaches his messaging and the way in which his organization is putting him as the only alternative is one that takes away from the power of a unified opposition,\u201d Roman explained.\n<\/p>\n

On Sunday, Pahlavi, who is the oldest son of the last shah of Iran and lives in exile in the United States, addressed the people of Iran in a long post on X.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cMy message to the remaining officials of this Republic of Terror is this: Surrender to the people of Iran. Declare your loyalty to my program and the Transition System. And hand over power without further bloodshed,\u201d Pahlavi said.\n<\/p>\n

Roman says that instead of arguing for his own leadership, Pahlavi would be wise to convene the leaders of \u201cthe 50 biggest Iranian opposition parties.\u201d Right now, Roman explains, the son of the former shah has ideas and plans on paper, but it is unclear who his governing team would be if he landed in Tehran tomorrow.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cA nonviolent transition of power\u201d is the ideal, according to Rob Greenway, director of the Allison Center for National Security at The Heritage Foundation, but getting there is a \u201ctortured path, because there isn\u2019t sufficient unanimity among the resistance groups, and it\u2019s impossible to judge the support that any of them have inside Iran.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

The \u201cstate,\u201d meaning the remnants of the Iranian regime, \u201cstill holds a monopoly of force, and so it will be voluntary on their part to cede power, and it\u2019s unlikely that\u2019s going to occur because they\u2019re ideologically predisposed,\u201d Greenway says.\n<\/p>\n

The Iranian regime holds to the principles of radical Islam and governs Iran through Sharia law.\n<\/p>\n

The \u201cmost likely\u201d and an \u201cacceptable\u201d outcome in Iran is \u201cwe don\u2019t have a friendly government there, but they no longer have the capacity to really effectively threaten us, which means that we would preserve our interests without a doubt, and \u2026 our partners and allies would be more than capable of dealing with the threat, which then doesn\u2019t require us to continually surge significant troops into the region,\u201d Greenway said.\n<\/p>\n

Ultimately, the question of Iran\u2019s governance is \u201cfor the Iranian people themselves to determine,\u201d Jacob Olidort, director of American security at the America First Policy Institute, told The Daily Signal.\n<\/p>\n

Trump has made it clear that the key objective of the current U.S. operation is ensuring that Iran never has the ability to obtain a nuclear weapon. Trump\u2019s objectives in Iran \u201care shaping conditions on the ground to enable a more favorable environment for the Iranian people to shape their country\u2019s destiny,\u201d Olidort said.\n<\/p>\n

Trump says the U.S. operation in Iran that began Saturday could last up to four or five weeks.\n<\/p>\n

How are you praying about Iran? Share your prayers and scriptures below.<\/h4>\n

This article was originally published at The Daily Signal. Photo Credit: Tasnim News Agency, CC BY 4.0, https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/w\/index.php?curid=185428341.<\/em>
\n \n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reading Time: 3 minutes Iran\u2019s Supreme Leader\u00a0Ali Khamenei is dead, and there is no clear successor to take his place. \u201cThe supreme leader made sure there was never any sort of heir apparent,\u201d Victoria Coates, former deputy national security adviser to President Donald Trump, explained to The Daily Signal. This content is supported by your<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21065,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[4707,592],"class_list":["post-21064","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-prayer","tag-irans","tag-leader"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21064","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21064"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21064\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/21065"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21064"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21064"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21064"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}