March 26, 2026

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Iran’s Power Structure Adapts to War

(AP Photo/Hadi Mizban)

Iran’s regime has exhibited resiliency and adaptability to the loss of many of its top government and security leaders since the war began nearly one month ago. President Trump and his war ally, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, have expressed surprise that Iran’s regime did not collapse after the killing of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on the first day of the campaign. U.S. and Israeli intelligence assessments apparently misjudged the vulnerability of Iran’s power structure to decapitation strikes, which have also killed top Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and Basij militia commanders as well as civilian leaders such as de facto regime leader Ali Larijani and the minister of intelligence. Replacing its losses with a deep bench of subordinate leaders, Iran has been able not only to continue to retaliate for U.S. and Israeli attacks, but to expand its target set beyond U.S. bases in the Persian Gulf to energy facilities, Gulf state infrastructure, and shipping through the Strait of Hormuz. With few exceptions, all of the surviving regime leaders insist on using Iran’s strategic advantages to deter the U.S. from attacking Iran at any time in the future.

A major question global officials are asking is who is running Iran now. Under the Islamic Republic’s constitution, the power of Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces is vested in a Supreme Leader. Under an opaque and abbreviated voting process, on March 8, the 88-member elected body of clerics, the Assembly of Experts, selected Khamenei’s son, Mojtaba, as Supreme Leader. By all accounts, key hardline IRGC and civilian leaders insisted on that selection for expediency in wartime, despite Mojtaba’s limited religious credentials. He drew hardliner support from his role as the gatekeeper to his father and an engineer of several major maneuvers, such as the allegedly fraudulent 2009 re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as president, that cemented hardliner dominance within the regime. But perhaps most importantly, Mojtaba was connected to the Habib Battalion and the "Habib Circle," the group of hardline Iranian figures forged in wartime during the Iran-Iraq War, who went on to form the backbone of the regime's military and intelligence senior leadership. So in many ways, he is one of them, having volunteered to join the front lines as a teenager.

However, U.S. officials agree that Mojtaba was badly wounded in the attack that killed his father, and suspect other hardliners are ruling in his name. The few statements he has issued since his selection have been read out by presenters, and he has not appeared in person in audio or video recordings. No regime figure claims to have met or talked with him in person. Last week, the Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, testified before Congress that Mojtaba was "very seriously injured" and that decision-making within Iran's leadership "is not clear… The IC (intelligence community) assesses the regime in Iran appears to be intact, but largely degraded due to attacks on its leadership and military capabilities.” One U.S. official told journalists that, although U.S. officials assess Mojtaba is alive, at the same time “…we have no proof he is holding the reins."

The apparently incapacity — or at least inaccessibility — of Mojtaba places governance and wartime management squarely in the hands of other surviving leaders, all of whom have a claim to a share of power based either on their backgrounds or their institutional positions. After the war began, the head of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council (SNSC), Ali Larijani, considered a hardliner but also pragmatic, was acknowledged by Iranian officials to be managing Iran’s governance and war effort in partnership with Majles Speaker Mohammad Baqr Qalibaf. Larijani’s death from a March 17 Israeli strike appears to have put Qalibaf in de facto charge of Iran. Like Larijani, Qalibaf has ties to both the IRGC and civilian government figures. Qalibaf was one of the first commanders of the IRGC’s air force, which ultimately abandoned building a capital-intensive combat air force to later become, as Iran’s Aerospace Force, the operator of Iran’s ballistic missile arsenal. He was later elected Tehran’s mayor, serving from 2005 to 2017, during which he had to navigate the provision of civilian public services while balancing the needs of several regime factions. He has held elected positions as a member of the Majlis since 2020 and as its Speaker since 2024, succeeding Larijani in that powerful post.

Trump officials reportedly view Qalibaf as their main interlocutor in U.S.-Iran talks, reportedly mediated by Egypt, Pakistan, and Türkiye, on a ceasefire. The talks are said to be aimed at achieving a permanent agreement on the major bilateral issues such as Iran’s nuclear and missile programs, and its support for armed factions in Tehran’s “Axis of Resistance,” as well as full freedom of navigation through the Strait of Hormuz. U.S. officials assess Qalibaf as not only sufficiently pragmatic to reach an agreement but also able to deliver on any Iranian commitments contained in a U.S.-Iran settlement. To that extent, Trump appears to view Qalibaf’s ascendancy as presenting a possible “Venezuela solution” in which a leader emerges from within the existing power willing to cooperate with U.S. priorities. However, most experts assess that Qalibaf and other leaders are steeped in the ideology of Iran’s Islamic Revolution, and view any agreement with the Trump team as purely transactional, aimed at achieving relief from comprehensive U.S sanctions. The entire power structure seeks to ensure that Washington comes to regret its decision to brush aside multiple rounds of talks to mount a major air campaign against Iran.

The U.S. “bet” on Qalibaf also ignores the fact that he will have to share power, or at least consult with, other leaders and factions. Mojtaba Khamenei and several key leaders tilted toward other figures, including Ibrahim Raisi (killed in a helicopter accident in 2024), in the four presidential elections in which Qalibaf competed but lost, suggesting he was not as close to Ali Khamenei as were the competing leaders. Still, the U.S. identification of Qalibaf as a possible interlocutor implies that Trump officials, who want an agreement with Iran that will avoid further economic and political fallout from the war, have instructed their Israeli partners not to target Qalibaf in future decapitation strikes.

The prominent role of Qalibaf and other hardliners also signals the relative political weakness of elected President Masoud Pezeshkian, a reformist, who outranks Qalibaf in the formal power structure. Pezeshkian has been the public face of the government since the war began, but his role is largely limited to trying to mitigate the effects of U.S. and Israeli bombardment on the civilian population. He is perceived as opposing hardline strategy by pushing for an end to the war, even if doing so requires Iranian concessions. He publicly advocated compromise with and amnesty for protest leaders during the mass uprising in January — positions dismissed by the dominant hardliners.

Washington’s belief that it can reach an agreement with an Iranian “moderate” obscures and perhaps ignores the degree to which hardliner extremists in the IRGC and other security institutions now monopolize the power structure. Several prominent IRGC leaders who have in recent years been on the sidelines of the power structure have been given key positions in wartime Iran. Last week, IRGC Major General Mohsen Reza’i, the IRGC’s commander throughout the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, and who built the organization from a regime protection militia into a major force, was appointed (officially) by Mojtaba Khamenei as his military advisor. Reza’i was an architect of the regime’s “war until victory” stance against the regime of Iraq’s Saddam Hussein during that war. Yesterday, Reza’i articulated an updated version of that stance by warning, in an interview with Fars News Agency, that Iran would escalate its response against the U.S. and Israel if Trump followed through on his threats to attack Iran’s civilian infrastructure. He stated: “If you attack the infrastructure of the Islamic Republic of Iran, our response will no longer be an eye for an eye, but rather a head for an eye; we will paralyze you and drown you in the Gulf.” He added the conflict would continue until Iran’s conditions, including compensation for war damages, the lifting of sanctions, and guarantees against U.S. interference, were met.

Reinforcing analysis that the war has shifted power toward IRGC hardliners, it was announced Tuesday that the Supreme Leader had appointed another former IRGC stalwart, Mohammad Baqr Zolqadr, to succeed Larijani as Secretary-General of the SNSC Like Reza’i, Zolqadr was a IRGC commander during the Iran-Iraq war, serving then as deputy IRGC commander and head of the Joint Staff that coordinates between the IRGC and the national military (Artesh).  He subsequently moved into high-ranking positions in the Iranian judiciary, an institution that acts harshly against domestic dissenters, and on regime governing bodies. Zolqadr reportedly was instrumental in regime suppression efforts against the student-led uprising in 1999 and the Green Movement uprising that protested alleged fraud in Ahmadinejad’s re-election in 2009. He is certain to join other hardliners in insisting that any ceasefire or peace agreement with the Trump team ensures Iran would not be attacked in the future.  At the same time, his links to the civilian side of the power structure are perhaps less well developed than those of Qalibaf, and he might not become as influential in decision-making as expected.