International Security and Law Analyst
The Israeli killing of Ali Larijani marks another blow to the Islamic Republic’s capacity for coordination, weakening an already fragmented system and raising the risk of miscalculation under pressure.
Iran confirmed on Tuesday that Larijani—Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council and one of the regime’s central security coordinators— was killed in a morning strike on Tehran.
The strike inevitably recalls the killing of Qassem Soleimani in 2020: another precise removal of a figure who linked diplomacy, intelligence and military power.
Soleimani’s death did more than eliminate a commander. It weakened the regime’s ability to calibrate risk. Radical in purpose, cautious in execution, he pushed proxies forward without inviting existential retaliation.
His absence left a gap no successor fully filled. Coordination frayed, misjudgments mounted and responses grew less predictable. The network endured, but its timing became erratic and its restraint thinner.
Larijani’s role must be understood against that backdrop.
According to a source cited by Christiane Amanpour, Larijani had, as recently as September 2025, been viewed in some Western and Israeli assessments as a potentially acceptable transitional figure before becoming a target by early February 2026.
The account attributes the shift to his role in pressing for domestic crackdowns, adopting a more confrontational posture toward the United States and Israel and assuming a central role in shaping IRGC military operations.
The claims remain unverified but highlight how Larijani straddled internal consolidation and external escalation at a moment of acute pressure.
His career began during the Iran-Iraq War, where he rose within the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to brigadier general, later serving as Speaker of Parliament (2008–2020), where he advanced a hard-line agenda aligned with the consolidation of power in the Office of the Supreme Leader.
In the years that followed, he moved from battlefield to bureaucracy, helping consolidate the regime’s coercive and ideological infrastructure.
As head of Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (1994–2004), Larijani oversaw more than a media organization. The state broadcaster worked closely with the intelligence services and the IRGC, shaping narratives that reinforced loyalty and narrowed the space for dissent.
The 1996 Hoviyyat (Identity) series publicly branded intellectuals and professionals as traitors, airing coerced confessions and drawing sharp limits around permissible thought. At the same time, official memory of the Iran-Iraq War was recast into doctrine: martyrdom elevated, endurance framed as victory.
Over time, this messaging helped consolidate a narrower but more disciplined base embedded across Basij and IRGC networks. Its purpose was not persuasion but enforcement: to secure the regime against a broader, often unwilling society.
That framework endured. It underpinned repression during the 2009 Green Movement, resurfaced during the Woman, Life, Freedom protests in 2022 and shaped the violence of January 2026.
Beyond Iran, the same logic informed Hezbollah’s campaign in Syria, Hamas operations culminating in October 7 and the IRGC’s maritime doctrine of asymmetric pressure.
Despite tensions within the political elite, Larijani remained firmly inside the core leadership. Loyal and disciplined, he embodied continuity across institutions.
Following the death of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in the February 28 strike that opened the current phase of war, Larijani’s experience and connections positioned him as a potential stabilizing figure.
His 2025 reappointment as Iran’s security chief reinforced that role. From there he coordinated nuclear policy, crisis management and relations among the regime’s core institutions.
Larijani’s removal would introduce immediate disruption: friction in command and pressure for retaliation. The deeper consequence may be fragmentation.
The Islamic Republic now operates less as a unified state than as a dispersed system under sustained pressure from Israel and the United States. Authority increasingly runs through provincial clerical networks, IRGC commanders and Basij structures. Resources are mobilized locally, repression enforced locally and survival managed locally.
Larijani belonged to the shrinking circle still capable of linking these fragments to a central command. His loss risks accelerating the incoherence the system is already struggling to contain.
Soleimani’s precedent is instructive: decapitation weakens coordination and invites miscalculation, even as the structure endures.
Missile infrastructure remains dispersed across hardened and subterranean sites. Fast naval craft and unmanned vessels continue to threaten shipping in the Strait of Hormuz. Proxy militias operate through channels designed to outlast leadership losses.
What appears as resilience may instead reflect dispersal without coordination — a system that survives but no longer acts as one.
Larijani’s killing tests not only the state’s durability but its capacity to function as a coherent force under sustained pressure. The war may not bring immediate collapse. But without figures such as Soleimani and Larijani, adaptation may hasten, rather than forestall, its demise.
Tehran’s unveiling of a towering statue depicting the Roman Emperor Valerian kneeling before pre-Islamic Persian King Shapur I has renewed criticism of the Islamic Republic’s appeal to nationalist sentiment following the June war with Israel.
For over forty years, the theocracy purged ancient Persian history from schoolbooks, replacing it with post-Islamic narratives. But after the 12-day conflict with Israel, officials have turned to the distant pre-Islamic past to rally a divided society.
From murals of ancient kings and soldiers to patriotic songs added to Shi’ite mourning ceremonies performed before Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, Tehran now embraces imagery once deemed heretical by its own revolutionary ethos.
'Kneel before Iran' campaign
Tehran’s Revolution (Enghelab) Square was the scene of an unusual spectacle on Friday as officials unveiled a massive bronze statue depicting Roman Emperor Valerian kneeling in submission before Sassanid King Shapur I, commemorating Iran’s victory at the Battle of Edessa (260 AD).
The event was held under the slogan “Kneel before Iran,” part of what authorities describe as a campaign to project “national unity and historical pride” following the June war with Israel.
Tehran Mayor Alireza Zakani, a staunch ultraconservative, said on X: “Enmity with Great Iran can only end in kneeling before this historic nation.”
Municipal official Davood Goodarzi said the installation would be accompanied by visual displays depicting “other victories of Iranians over foreign aggressors,” including the defeat of British forces by local commander Rais-Ali Delvari, Mirza Kuchak Khan’s resistance against Russian troops, and Surena’s triumph over Rome at the Battle of Carrhae in 53 BCE.
The goal, Goodarzi said, is “strengthening concepts such as national dignity, social unity, and Iranian identity.”
The statue, he said, would remain temporarily at Revolution Square before being moved to a city gateway “where it will stand as the first emblem of Iran before diplomats and foreign visitors.”
Unveiled women were allowed to attend the unveiling ceremony—an uncommon scene at events organized by Tehran’s ultra-hardline municipality.
The turn to the pre-Islamic past
The sharp reversal also recalls remarks once made by Khamenei. In a 2011 speech, he asserted that “all the great military victories of this nation came after Islam,” dismissing pre-Islamic accounts as “things that are not documented.”
In 1987, he had said that prophets triumphed over kings such as Cyrus and that “nothing remains of these monarchs in history but names remembered with derision.”
Nevertheless, pro-government social media accounts have now gone so far as to circulate posters equating Khamenei himself with Shapur, showing him standing with a staff as Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump kneel before him. The caption reads: “You will kneel before Iran.”
'Hypocrisy'
Pro-government figures have hailed the move as a patriotic success. Conservative political reporter Hossein Saremi posted: “Today’s grand Iranian gathering showed that people and the state share one essence: Iran itself. Nothing can take our homeland away.”
Others, however, called the spectacle “hypocrisy.” Journalist Gholamhossein Pashaei wrote on X: “Every year you close Pasargadae to stop people from celebrating Cyrus Day, yet you unveil Shapur’s statue in Enghelab Square with drums and fireworks during Fatimiyya (mourning period)!”
Dissident commentator Hamid Asafi called the ceremony “a perfect snapshot of the Islamic Republic’s contradictions.”
On Telegram he wrote: “A week ago they closed Cyrus’s tomb out of fear of the crowds, and now they glorify Shapur in the same breath. The Islamic Republic fears living history but poses for selfies with its corpse.”
He added: “They know people no longer respond to rosaries and sermons. That’s why they’ve brought history back to the stage—in a controlled costume. If they can’t erase the past, they’ll try to own it.”
The irony deepened as UNESCO formally recognized Cyrus’s Charter as one of the earliest human-rights documents.
President Masoud Pezeshkian wrote on X: “Iran, the cradle of dialogue, justice, and coexistence, can still inspire peace today.”
Users swiftly replied, questioning how such pride could coexist with a government that blocks access to Cyrus’s tomb each year to those wishing to visit it on his birthday.