Who – or what – will replace Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei

By Michael Stephens, Development and Security Consultant, RAND Europe
John Kennedy, Research leader, RAND Europe

Leadership transitions in dictatorships can signal upheaval – for better or worse – and in Iran that moment has now arrived. The death of the supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, in a US airstrike on Tehran on February 28 marks the most consequential rupture in the Islamic Republic’s political system since 1989.

Unlike the managed transition that followed the death of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini (who led the country from the 1979 revolution for ten years, after which Khamenei took over) things are different. This succession…

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