Ayatollah Khamenei’s Deadly Legacy

Within hours of the massive explosion near the Tehran compound of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, on the morning of February 28, Israeli and American sources announced – and Iranian state media later confirmed – that Khamenei had been killed.

Across Iranian cities and among diaspora communities, spontaneous celebrations erupted, a catharsis of the public anger accumulated over decades of repression under Khamenei’s regime, including the violent crackdown in January on nationwide protests, in which government forces reportedly killed or detained tens of thousands of demonstrators. But the shock of Khamenei’s death does not necessarily signal the collapse of the security and political apparatus he spent nearly four decades building. This institutional structure of power may indeed be his most enduring legacy.

When the Islamic Republic’s founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, died in 1989, few political insiders imagined Khamenei as a dominant or transformative successor. Under article 109 of Iran’s constitution, the supreme leader was originally required to hold the status of marjaʿ-e taqlid, or a grand ayatollah, the highest level of Shia religious authority – and a qualification Khamenei did not possess.

Within months of Khomeini’s death, however, article 109 was amended. The requirement of achieving the supreme clerical rank of grand ayatollah was replaced with more general political and religious qualifications. At the same time, the model of a single supreme leader endowed with expansive powers was reinforced. Many people, including even influential revolutionary figures, believed Khamenei would play a more symbolic role, delegating governing authority to elected officials such as the president. They were badly mistaken.

Over the following decades, Khamenei gradually transformed the position of Supreme Leader from a supervisory authority into the Islamic Republic’s central command structure. His most consequential political innovation was the reconfiguration of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Whereas Khomeini emphasized limiting military involvement in political affairs, Khamenei relied on article 110 of the constitution – which grants the supreme leader command over all armed forces – to cultivate a fiercely loyal security apparatus.

No longer just a military institution, the IRGC under Khamenei became a political and economic conglomerate embedded in nearly every major sector of Iran’s economy, from infrastructure and construction to telecoms, energy projects, and the oil trade. The system Khamenei created was one in which military loyalty, financial interests, and regime survival became mutually reinforcing. His political authority was secured as much by institutional dependency as by ideology.

To consolidate his power further, Khamenei wielded control over the Guardian Council, which was established under Article 91 of the constitution with the aim of maintaining institutional balance. The Guardian Council comprises six Islamic jurists directly appointed by the supreme leader and six legal experts nominated by the head of the judiciary and approved by parliament. But under article 157, the supreme leader appoints the head of the judiciary, thus having final say over all 12 members. Over time, the Guardian Council’s authority to vet parliamentary candidates effectively allowed it to narrow the political field to only those individuals deemed acceptable by the regime.

A similar dynamic developed within the Assembly of Experts. Under articles 107 and 111 of the constitution, the Assembly is responsible for supervising the supreme leader and appointing his successor. The body is supposed to be one of the few constitutional checks on his authority. But in practice, candidates must first be approved by the Guardian Council, creating a feedback loop in which the supreme leader’s influence extends into the institution tasked with overseeing him.

Iran’s constitution does provide a legal mechanism for leadership succession. Upon the supreme leader’s death or incapacity, article 111 stipulates that executive authority temporarily transfers to a council composed of the president, the head of the judiciary, and a Guardian Council jurist chosen by the Expediency Discernment Council. But this presumes institutional independence, which Khamenei undermined so effectively.

Even so, the system Khamenei helped create will outlive his death. The networks governing the judiciary, security establishment, and clerical institutions remain deeply interconnected. During Khamenei’s rule, authority increasingly depended on a mix of religious legitimacy, military loyalty, and economic control, all anchored within constitutional mechanisms that concentrate power while preserving the outward appearance of legality. Khamenei’s successor will inherit not just a political office, but an institutional architecture designed to reproduce centralized authority.

Iran therefore faces a moment of profound authoritarian uncertainty, as neither regime collapse nor a predictable transition seems likely. Governing institutions will remain intact even as political legitimacy weakens and succession becomes contested, perhaps violently so. Without structural reforms, the same concentration of power could be transferred to a new supreme leader, perpetuating Iran’s political stagnation.

Meaningful, lasting change in Iran will depend less on who succeeds Khamenei than on whether his institutional legacy is dismantled. The problem is that the beneficiaries of the old system are unlikely to acquiesce quietly in an entirely new governing framework. But without an overhaul of executive power, the IRGC’s economic dominance, and the mechanisms controlling political participation, Iran’s authoritarian system will merely re-equilibrate.

Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2026. www.project-syndicate.org