The killing of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in the opening strike of the US-Israeli offensive has triggered a succession crisis in Iran that will determine the country’s political direction for the next generation. President Donald Trump has made clear he intends to influence that crisis, publicly dismissing the leading candidate for the supreme leadership and expressing his desire to see someone who will bring “harmony and peace” to Iran. How he imagines he will exercise that influence remains unexplained.
Iran’s constitutional processes for selecting a new supreme leader have been set in motion regardless of Trump’s preferences. Iranian state television reported that a leadership council has begun discussing how to convene the assembly of experts, the body responsible under Iran’s constitution for selecting a new supreme leader. The assembly’s members are elected by Iranian voters and are predominantly conservative clerics aligned with the Islamic Republic’s foundational principles. Their selection process has never previously been subject to foreign influence.
The military campaign in which the succession crisis is embedded has been relentless. American B-2 stealth bombers have struck Iran’s buried missile infrastructure with dozens of 2,000-pound penetrating munitions. A large Iranian naval vessel has been hit and possibly destroyed. Israel has issued mass evacuation orders in Lebanon covering over one million people and struck Hezbollah’s command infrastructure across Beirut. The defense secretary has promised dramatically increased US firepower. The IDF chief has promised undisclosed new phases.
Iran has continued fighting throughout the succession deliberations. The Revolutionary Guards have maintained their missile and drone campaign against US bases and Israeli territory. Hezbollah has kept up its rocket barrage in Lebanon. Iranian state television has broadcast mass mourning for Khamenei alongside defiance against foreign aggression. The message from Iran’s remaining leadership is that the Islamic Republic will endure and will determine its own future — with or without American input.
Trump’s desire to influence the succession process reflects the maximum ambition of his campaign: not just to destroy Iran’s military capability, but to reshape its political system from the outside. It is an ambition that has no precedent in the history of modern nation-states. Even in cases of successful regime change, the selection of successor leaders has been a deeply contested internal process in which external powers have had limited and contested influence. Trump’s confidence that he can do better than historical precedent is one of the defining features of a war that has already broken every rule in the book.
