Israel and the United States have made clear that one of their goals in the current war with Iran is to bring down the Islamic Republic and replace it with a new government. The two allies still haven’t endorsed any specific candidates to lead the new government, instead emphasizing that the Iranian people will need to decide who will lead.
However, there are many different figures and groups vying for power in Iran, both within the existing regime and among opposition groups. Who will end up on top depends on a lot of different factors, many of which aren’t within American or Israeli control.
Scenario 1a: The regime survives as it exists now
The first scenario is the most troubling for Israel, the U.S., and many Iranians: the regime survives in some form. But even if it survives, there are a variety of potential leaders who could take over, each with their own interests and priorities.
Part of the issue is that Iran’s system of government is relatively complex, combining aspects of democracy with the idea that religious authorities should have the final say in governance, an ideal known as Velayat-e faqih (the guardianship of the Islamic Jurist).
At the top is the Supreme Leader (up until recently, Ali Khamenei). The Supreme Leader — who has to be a cleric of a certain status — has a lot of power, but it’s not absolute. He is the commander of Iran’s military, has the final power to declare war and approve peace deals, and is in charge of appointing key officials, including top judges, half of the members of the Guardian Council, and the members of the Expediency Council.
Below him, the government is divided into a series of overlapping branches. The judiciary runs the courts. The Guardian Council, split between clerics appointed by the Supreme Leader and legal scholars selected by the parliament, approves or rejects laws passed by parliament and can reject candidates for the Assembly of Experts, the presidency, and parliament. This gives it significant power over the other branches of government.
Candidates approved by the Guardian Council can run for the presidency and the parliament, which run like a regular government, except that their decisions can be overruled by the Supreme Leader and Guardian Council at nearly any time. The Expediency Council, another body, mediates disputes between the parliament and the Guardian Council and advises the Supreme Leader.
Since all of the bodies that can overrule other bodies are fully or mostly appointed by the Supreme Leader, his authority over the entire system of government is nearly total. The main check on his power is the Assembly of Experts, an 88-member council of directly elected religious jurists tasked with appointing new Supreme Leaders and dismissing them if it deems them unqualified. However, the candidates for the Assembly of Experts are also vetted by the Guardian Council, making this check largely symbolic. In the rare cases members have criticized the Supreme Leader, they have been arrested and removed from the council.
While all major players in the regime agree in principle with the ideal of Velayat-e faqih, not all agree about who should hold the bulk of the power. The regime is split into two broad camps, reformists and hardliners, although there are further sub-categories. The short of it is that the reformists are willing to make some changes in the system of government to meet the demands of the Iranian public and open ties with more countries, while hardliners insist on maintaining a radical status quo in accordance with their interpretation of Islam.
Iran is currently run by a temporary leadership council headed by President Masoud Pezeshkian, Judiciary Chief Gholamhossein Mohseni-Ejei, and Alireza Arafi, a hardline cleric and member of the Guardian Council. Simultaneously, Ali Larijani, the head of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, has been running much of the country, as he has played a central role in the leadership since at least January, according to The New York Times. Larijani formerly served as a commander in the IRGC and was reportedly one of the main figures responsible for the January 2026 crackdown on protesters, which killed thousands and arrested tens of thousands.
Eventually, the Assembly of Experts will need to appoint a new Supreme Leader to keep the regime in its current form. There are several main candidates reportedly being considered.
Mojtaba Khamenei is reportedly the front-runner being considered. The son of the former Supreme Leader, Khamenei managed his father’s office for over 20 years and has deep relationships with senior IRGC commanders. He would enter the office with the experience and connections to handle the various roles of the position. However, this option has been controversial as many in the regime feel a father-to-son transfer of power would be too similar to the monarchy that the Islamic Revolution in 1979 overthrew.
Gholamhossein Mohseni-Ejei is another leading hardline candidate. The head of Iran’s judiciary and a former intelligence minister, he is a seasoned political figure. He has been tightly connected to the regime’s violent crackdown in January, promising “no leniency” toward the protesters.
Alireza Arafi, a hardline cleric, is another candidate reportedly being considered. He is an influential cleric but isn’t well known outside the Iranian religious establishment and doesn’t have a clear political or military base of support. He is also the Friday Prayer Imam of Qom, an influential role in one of Iran’s most important centers of religious studies. Analysts say he may be seen as a “safe” pick since he wasn’t publicly linked to the violent crackdown on protesters.
Another candidate, Hassan Khomeini, is the grandson of the founder of the Islamic Republic in Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. However, he is considered relatively reformist, which may lower his favorability, especially in the wake of war. In 2016, he was blocked from running for the Assembly of Experts. While the Guardian Council claimed it was because it couldn’t prove he had sufficient knowledge of Islamic law, the move was widely viewed as political, aimed at preventing a moderate ally from gaining influence in the body tasked with electing the next Supreme Leader. This past makes Khomeini a wildcard, though he could still be picked if the Assembly of Experts decides that providing a new, more moderate face will help the regime survive compared to sticking to the status quo, a move that would increase tensions domestically and internationally. His appointment would likely be seen as a “worst-case” scenario for the regime, only to be chosen if it seemed there were no other options.
Mohammed Mehdi Mirbagheri is a staunch hardliner among the clerics who might be considered. Known for his extremist rhetoric, he has advocated accepting extreme conditions to fight against the “infidels.” He categorically rejects any Western influence and has advocated for harsh coercion to ensure religious laws are followed. He has also pushed for the clerical side of the government to have nearly absolute control.
Scenario 1b: The Venezuela option
U.S. President Donald Trump may also try to find a figure within the regime willing to accept U.S. demands in return for allowing the regime to continue to exist in some form. This would be similar to what happened in Venezuela, where Delcy Rodríguez, an ally of President Nicolás Maduro, was allowed to remain in power in return for accepting Trump’s demands after Maduro was taken into U.S. custody.
However, Iran isn’t Venezuela. Iran’s multi-layered, complex system of government means that keeping any major figures in power would only perpetuate the same problems. Iran has already used deals in the past to bide its time and build up its capabilities to wage war at a later date. Some analysts have argued that even if it agreed to certain concessions, the regime and its institutions would retain the ideals of the revolution, especially its opposition to the West and Israel. The IRGC, tasked with maintaining these ideals, would almost certainly ensure this.
It also remains unclear who could fill such a role. The entirety of the Iranian leadership has, without defection, maintained the positions of the regime or even become more radical, rejecting any real compromise with the U.S. and emphasizing their enmity to the West and Israel.
Even figures seen as reformist or pragmatic, like Pezeshkian, aligned behind the brutal crackdown on protesters in January, raising serious questions about who would agree to change the regime in any meaningful way if chosen.
Scenario 1c: The IRGC takes over
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is the main base of power in Iran outside of the Supreme Leader. Formed in 1979 by the Islamic Revolution in Iran as a counterweight to the existing army, the IRGC was tasked with protecting the revolution from internal unrest and spreading its ideals around the world, including by supervising, training, and arming proxy groups like Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis.
In the years since, the IRGC has gained power over much of Iran’s political and economic system. Many politicians are former IRGC officers, and IRGC-owned companies control much of Iran’s infrastructure, banking, shipping, and manufacturing.
While the IRGC is charged with preserving the regime, many experts believe it could betray the ideal of velayat-e faqih and try to form a military government in place of the government of clerics. Potential candidates for such a leadership include Larijani and Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the current speaker of parliament and a former IRGC general who took over key powers during the war with Israel last June when contact was lost with Khamenei.
However, the IRGC may not choose to completely eliminate the position of Supreme Leader. The IRGC could, for example, appoint a cleric of its choosing to the role as a figurehead, while keeping all real decision-making power in its own hands.
In this scenario, the Iranian government could double down on repressing dissent at home and on supporting proxies around the world, becoming even more extreme than it already is.
Other experts argue, however, that the IRGC is not a monolith and has many different leaders with different agendas and ideologies. Competing factions within the IRGC may fight over who gets to lead, meaning there are many directions this scenario could develop. Such infighting could even lead to the IRGC failing to unite the country under a central control
Some experts have noted that Mojtaba Khamenei is already receiving support from the IRGC to become the next Supreme Leader. They argue that Khamenei is seen as an option to preserve the existing system and maintain internal stability. Khamenei also provides the IRGC a channel to gain even more influence over the government, providing the benefits of taking power without many of the risks.
Scenario 2: Opposition forces take over
If the regime falls, several opposition groups are positioning themselves to lead, but these groups are deeply divided by ideology, ethnicity, personal rivalries, and competing visions of what a future Iran should look like.
Reza Pahlavi and the monarchist movement
The most prominent opposition figure is Reza Pahlavi, the 65-year-old son of Iran’s last king, who was overthrown in the 1979 revolution. Pahlavi has positioned himself as a “transitional leader” rather than proposing he claim the throne, saying he supports a secular democracy and that Iranians should decide their own system of government through a referendum.
Pahlavi has the highest name recognition among opposition figures. In polling by GAMAAN, a research group that surveys Iranians, about 31% expressed support for him, the highest of any single figure, though roughly a third also strongly oppose him. In February 2025, a coalition of liberal and nationalist parties meeting in Munich selected him to lead a transitional government.
However, Pahlavi has struggled to build lasting coalitions. In February 2023, he joined several other prominent opposition figures, including Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi, journalist Masih Alinejad, and Kurdish leader Abdullah Mohtadi, to form the Alliance for Democracy and Freedom in Iran (ADFI) at Georgetown University. The alliance collapsed within six weeks. According to multiple accounts, Pahlaviresisted efforts to create a structured organization with shared decision-making, and his supporters attacked other coalition members on social media.
Pahlavi also faces credibility issues. An October 2025 investigation by Haaretz and Citizen Lab revealed an Israeli state-funded covert influence operation promoting him. In addition, ethnic minority groups, particularly Kurds, are deeply suspicious that Pahlavi’s movement represents a return to the centralized Persian nationalism of his father’s reign.
During the January 2026 protests, Pahlavi claimed to have “secure channels with 50,000 defectors” within the regime. However, analysts noted that his network was “not operational when the regime massacred people in the streets.” His call to action on January 8 and 9 generated a significant response, with large crowds flooding the streets across Iran and many videos showing protesters chanting slogans in his support. However, considering past polling and his family’s complicated and dark history in Iran, it remains unclear how many Iranians would willingly put him in power over other options.
The MEK (Mojahedin-e Khalq)
The People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (MEK), led by Maryam Rajavi, is one of the most organized opposition groups, but it’s also among the most controversial. On February 28, 2026, immediately after Khamenei’s death, Rajavi declared a “Provisional Government” with herself as president-elect.
The MEK has significant lobbying infrastructure in Washington and Brussels, with supporters including John Bolton, Rudy Giuliani, and Tom Ridge. However, it has little support among ordinary Iranians. The group allied with Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s, fighting against its own country, a betrayal most Iranians have not forgotten. The MEK has also been behind a series of terrorist attacks, including an attack on the Iranian mission to the U.N. in New York in 1992, and supported the takeover of the U.S. Embassy during the 1979 revolution.
Human rights organizations have documented cult-like internal practices, and a 2023 Albanian police raid on their compound revealed evidence of cybercrime and money laundering. A U.S. State Department assessment in 2023 described the MEK as “not a viable democratic opposition.”
No other major opposition group recognizes the MEK’s self-declared government.
Pro-democracy groups
Beyond Pahlavi and the MEK, a constellation of smaller groups advocates for a secular democratic republic, neither a monarchy nor the current theocracy.
The most established is the Hamgami coalition (formally, the Coalition for a Secular Democratic Republic in Iran), which brings together five political organizations, including branches of the historic Iran National Front, founded in 1949 by Mohammad Mossadegh, and the Left Party of Iran. Hamgami advocates for the separation of religion and state, free elections, an independent judiciary, and normal relations with all countries, including the U.S. and Israel. According to GAMAAN polling, about 26% of Iranians inside the country support a secular democratic republic, the largest single ideological grouping among regime opponents, though this support is spread across multiple organizations rather than concentrated behind one leader.
However, Hamgami and similar groups have struggled to gain visibility outside of Iran and it’s unclear how well they’re connected in Iran, if at all.
The Iran Freedom Congress
The newest organizational effort is the Iran Freedom Congress (IFC), scheduled for March 28-29, 2026, in London. A preliminary meeting on February 23-24 brought together over 30 participants from political parties, ethnic minority groups, and civil society, with about 300 expected at the full congress.
The IFC is designed to avoid the failures of previous unity efforts. It explicitly states it is not a venue for “leadership selection” or “coalition formation.” Instead, it aims to build a framework for pluralistic decision-making during a transition. Its principal coordinator, Mehrdad Marty Youssefiani, previously served for nearly two decades as Pahlavi’s chief counselor, but the Congress positions itself as independent of any single leader.
The IFC has drawn support from the Middle East Forum, a U.S. think tank whose Iran Freedom Project has deployed over 470 Starlink terminals inside Iran to help citizens communicate during the regime’s internet blackout. The Congress has also attracted participation from ethnic minority representatives, who secured agreement on two founding principles: recognition of the rights of all ethnic groups, and a “full manifesto of human rights.”
Whether the IFC can hold together where previous efforts collapsed remains to be seen.
Ethnic minority movements
Iran is an ethnically diverse country, with large minority groups largely concentrated along the country’s borders. The western region is largely Kurdish and Luri; the southwest is largely Arab; the northwest is Azeri; and the southeast is Balochi. Together, ethnic minorities make up roughly 40% of the population.
These groups have faced severe repression under both the current regime and the monarchy before it. They have been blocked from using their languages in education and in the press, and security forces have used disproportionate violence during crackdowns in minority areas. Both the Islamic Republic and the Pahlavi monarchy have portrayed ethnic minorities as a security threat, accusing them of trying to undermine Iran’s territorial integrity.
Several minority groups have organized politically and, in some cases, militarily.
Among the Kurds, five major parties announced the formation of the Coalition of Political Forces of Iranian Kurdistan in February 2026. Nearly all major Kurdish parties demand federalism, self-governance within a united, democratic Iran, rather than outright independence, at least as an initial step in any scenario in which the regime falls. One exception is the Kurdistan Freedom Party (PAK), which calls for an independent Kurdish state. The coalition’s declaration called on other Iranian opposition groups to recognize Kurdish self-determination, though there is internal debate about what that means in practice. Two major Kurdish parties, including the Komala Party, declined to join the coalition, reportedly due to disagreements over strategy and messaging.
On March 3, Trump personally called Mustafa Hijri, the leader of the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (PDKI), reportedly in an effort to encourage a Kurdish ground offensive into western Iran. Kurdish groups have neither confirmed nor denied plans for such an operation, with some describing their approach as a “third way,” aligning neither with the regime nor the attacking forces. Regardless, many reports have indicated the U.S. is continuing efforts to arm and organize Kurdish forces to confront the regime along the western border of Iran, thereby distracting security forces from other areas and opening the door to renewed protests.
In Balochi areas, several opposition groups merged into the People’s Fighters Front in December 2025. One of the main factions, Jaish al-Adl, is a separatist militant group that has worked for years to achieve independence. Whether the merged group will continue to demand full independence or accept some form of self-rule remains unclear.
Another major leader among Balochs is Molavi Abdolhamid Esmailzehi, the main Sunni spiritual leader in southwestern Iran. He has consistently demanded significant reforms to Iran’s system of government but has not called for Baloch independence.
Arab and Azerbaijani movements also exist but are organizationally weaker. The Congress of Nationalities for a Federal Iran (CNFI), founded in London in 2005, serves as a coordinating body bringing these groups together around a shared demand for federalism. A newer coalition, the Broad Solidarity for Freedom and Equality in Iran, has been the main vehicle uniting minority voices since 2024.
The central tension for all minority groups is trust: will any post-regime government actually honor commitments to federalism and minority rights, or will Persian centralism reassert itself under a new flag?
Minority groups present at the preliminary meeting of the Iran Freedom Congress in February expressed concerns about Pahalvi’s prominence and the sense that they were being ignored, despite fighting the regime for decades. However, they have committed to taking part in the main meeting at the end of this month, provided the principles agreed upon in the February meeting are upheld.
Scenario 3: A power vacuum
One of the most troubling answers to the question of who will lead after the war is “no one.”
Several major research institutions have warned that regime collapse could lead to outcomes worse than the regime itself. The International Crisis Group cautioned that “a sudden collapse of the regime could lead to prolonged violence along ideological, ethnic and sectarian lines.” It also warned that nearly half a ton of near-weapons-grade uranium, enough for 10 nuclear warheads, is unaccounted for after the June 2025 war and could end up “in hands less predictable than the regime’s.”
Michael Rubin of the American Enterprise Institute laid out a detailed civil war scenario. He noted that in 2007, the IRGC established a military unit in every province of Iran. If the central authority collapses, those weapons could be snatched up by competing factions.
“Each base’s quartermaster general becomes a potential shah (king)-maker,” Rubin wrote. He also warned that neighboring countries could fuel the chaos. Azerbaijan could encourage separatism among Iran’s Azeri population, although Azeri Iranians have traditionally been staunchly loyal to Iran. Turkey could intervene militarily to prevent Kurdish empowerment. Saudi Arabia could back Baloch or Arab groups, and Israel could pick any one of the plethora of factions to support. “Iran could very easily become the object of a proxy war,” Rubin warned.
A RAND Corporation analysis identified four possible outcomes, including a scenario where regime leaders simply flee, like Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, leaving behind a power vacuum. The analysis warned that “Iranians would have to take to the streets and face the remnants of a tyrannical regime willing to fight to remain in power. This could result in a highly unpredictable situation.”
The historical precedents are sobering. In Iraq, the U.S. dissolved the military and barred ruling party members from government jobs in 2003. The result was an armed, unemployed population that fueled a decade-long insurgency and the rise of ISIS. In Libya, after U.S. intervention in 2011 led to the collapse of the regime of Muammar Gaddafi, weapons from government depots spread across North Africa, feeding conflicts from Mali to Niger. Over a decade later, Libya remains divided among several competing factions, with periodic conflicts still erupting.
The New Republic argued that stabilizing a post-collapse Iran could require over half a million peacekeeping troops in the nation of 90 million, a commitment no country is willing to make. For comparison, the U.S. deployed about 170,000 troops to occupy Iraq, a country with a quarter of Iran’s population, and still failed to prevent years of civil war. No country has signaled any willingness to commit ground forces to Iran, and the Trump administration has repeatedly said it does not intend to send troops. Without an outside stabilizing force and without a strong internal alternative ready to govern, a post-collapse Iran would be left to sort itself out, a process that, as Iraq and Libya showed, can take years and cost countless lives.
There are already signs that the regime’s grip is loosening. Iran’s Foreign Ministry has stated that the military “has lost control over several units, which are operating according to old general instructions.” This means that some military commanders are no longer receiving orders from Tehran and are instead acting on their own, following whatever directives they last received before communications broke down.
At least two Iranian diplomats stationed in Europe have reportedly requested asylum rather than return home, a small but telling indicator of eroding loyalty among officials who can see the regime’s isolation from the outside. Inside the country, the ongoing bombing campaign and internet blackout make it difficult to assess conditions, but the combination of a decapitated leadership, degraded military communications, and a population that revolted just weeks ago creates conditions where local power centers could begin operating independently of any central authority.
One of the biggest risks is speed. The Middle East Forum, which has closely tracked the Iranian opposition, warned that if the regime falls, it could take as little as three days for the country to start splitting apart along ethnic and regional lines. Its concern is straightforward: if the old government is gone and no new one is ready to take its place, power doesn’t just sit unclaimed; it gets grabbed by whoever is strongest locally. In the think tank’s assessment, IRGC commanders might hold onto their provinces, ethnic armed groups may seize control of their home regions, and remnants of the old regime may hold whatever territory they can defend.
Iran’s geography makes this especially dangerous. The country’s ethnic minorities aren’t scattered evenly; they’re concentrated in distinct border regions, each with its own armed groups and, in some cases, sympathetic neighbors across the border. If each of these groups moves to secure their own territory at the same time, while IRGC units in the Persian-majority center do the same, Iran could quickly fracture into a patchwork of competing armed authorities with no one in a position to bring them to the table and no agreement on what the table should even look like.
A regime collapse would also raise serious security risks extending outside Iran’s borders. Beyond the unsecured nuclear material already described, Iran has thousands of trained nuclear scientists whose expertise could be sought by other governments or, in a worst case, by terrorist organizations. Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Egypt have all signaled that they would pursue their own nuclear weapons if Iran acquired one, and a chaotic situation where nuclear material is unsecured could push them in that direction even if Iran never actually builds a bomb.
Iran also has one of the largest conventional weapons arsenals in the Middle East, including thousands of ballistic missiles, drones, and vast stockpiles of arms distributed across IRGC bases in all 31 provinces. If the central authority breaks down, those weapons could end up in the hands of militant groups, criminal networks, or be smuggled across borders. Ungoverned or poorly governed territory in Iran could also become safe havens for extremist groups looking for a new base of operations, much as instability in Syria and Iraq created space for ISIS to build its so-called caliphate in 2014.
Iran sits in one of the most strategically sensitive locations on Earth. Its southern coast runs along the Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly a fifth of the world’s oil supply passes. It borders seven countries, several of which are already fragile: Iraq and Afghanistan have spent decades dealing with their own civil conflicts; Pakistan’s Balochistan province has an active insurgency; and Turkey is deeply wary of any Kurdish empowerment that could energize its own Kurdish population. A flood of Iranian refugees into any of these countries could overwhelm already-strained governments and create humanitarian crises on multiple fronts simultaneously, potentially even sparking additional conflicts.
In short, chaos in Iran wouldn’t stay in Iran; its effects would ripple across the region and the world, in ways hard to predict.
So what happens next?
The honest answer to “who will lead Iran after the war?” is that nobody knows, whether they’re in Iran or abroad.
The regime has lost its supreme leader, its military is being hit by airstrikes every day, its economy was already in freefall before the war started, and its own people rose up against it just weeks ago. However, it still has a massive security force that has shown its willingness to kill thousands of its own citizens to stay in power, and its institutions are still functioning, at least in part.
The opposition, meanwhile, has the support of most Iranians who want change, but it has no unified leadership, no shared plan for what a new Iran should look like, and no way to actually take control of the country even if the regime collapses tomorrow. The various opposition groups, including monarchists, supporters of democracy, and ethnic minorities, agree that the Islamic Republic needs to go, but not on much else. They have tried to unite before, but most of these efforts have quickly collapsed. A new effort, the Iran Freedom Congress, planned for London later this month, seems to be broader, and its organizers say they’ve learned from past failures, but whether it will hold together remains to be seen.
If there’s one thing most experts agree on, it’s that there is no clean or simple ending to this. The best-case scenario, where figures inside and outside the regime sit down and negotiate a new system of government, would require a level of trust and cooperation that simply doesn’t exist between any of the major players.
One of the worst cases is a drawn-out civil war, with neighboring countries backing different factions and no one strong enough to reunify the country. Many analysts think the reality could land somewhere between those extremes: a weakened regime, led by the IRGC, holding onto power in the center of the country while outlying regions, particularly those with large ethnic minorities, start operating more and more on their own. In other words, not a dramatic collapse, but a slow unraveling that could take years to play out.
For 90 million Iranians, the question of who leads next isn’t academic. It will determine whether their children grow up in a democracy, a military dictatorship, or a war zone.
