Iran International
The assassination of Ali Larijani has opened a rare gap at the center of Iran’s security system, raising immediate questions about who can replace him and whether anyone can perform the same role.
With a career spanning both the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the political establishment, including a decade as parliament speaker, Larijani functioned as a bridge between Iran’s military and civilian centers of power.
That position—part coordinator, part mediator—made him one of the system’s most important internal stabilizers. His removal further narrows the circle of actors capable of managing competing interests within the system.
Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei praised him in a brief statement Wednesday, vowing to avenge his blood.
Senior officials sought to project continuity. President Masoud Pezeshkian said Larijani’s “path of resistance combined with rationality” would continue, while Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi insisted that the absence of any individual cannot destabilize the Islamic Republic’s “powerful political structure.”
Even with continuity, however, the system Larijani helped manage now faces a more immediate test: succession.
Formally, the secretary of the SNSC is appointed by the president, but the role only acquires real authority when the Supreme Leader designates the holder as his representative, granting voting power within the council.
Early indications suggest that Mojtaba Khamenei is overseeing key appointments. Whether he does so here will shape both the balance of power and the direction of decision-making.
Two names dominate early speculation.
Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf, the current speaker of parliament, is already a member of the council and holds voting rights, making his elevation procedurally straightforward.
A former IRGC Air Force commander and national police chief, he brings operational experience and political stature. But his appointment carries risks. His high profile and role in recent military operations could place him near the top of potential Israeli target lists, raising questions about durability and continuity.
Ali-Akbar Ahmadian, a senior IRGC naval commander, represents a more technocratic option. He previously served as both secretary of the council and the Supreme Leader’s representative before being reassigned in 2025.
His return would provide institutional familiarity, but he would require reappointment by the new leadership to regain full authority. Compared to Ghalibaf, he offers less political reach but fewer immediate security liabilities.
Other figures—including former IRGC commander Mohsen Rezaei and former SNSC secretary Saeed Jalili—have been mentioned but appear less likely contenders, either because they would require additional endorsement or because of political frictions within the current leadership.
Larijani’s influence rested less on formal authority than on his ability to navigate between institutions that do not always align: the IRGC, the presidency, parliament, and the clerical establishment. Replacing that function may prove harder than filling the office.
His absence therefore raises a broader question about the system’s internal cohesion. Without a figure capable of managing competing centers of power, the risk of renewed factionalism increases—particularly at a time when external pressure is intensifying.
Iran’s leadership insists the system remains stable. The coming appointment will test that claim.
That was the frame Khatib laid out in a long interview published on Ali Khamenei’s website during the Woman, Life, Freedom uprising. It became more than rhetoric. It became a governing logic that collapsed protest, foreign media, activism and espionage into one threat map.
Khatib’s career made him unusually suited to that task.
Born in 1961 and trained in Qom, he rose through the Revolutionary Guards’ intelligence world, later ran the intelligence office in Qom, moved into the Supreme Leader’s protection orbit and then headed the judiciary’s protection and intelligence apparatus.
By the time Ebrahim Raisi made him intelligence minister in 2021, Khatib had passed through nearly every institution that mattered in the Islamic Republic’s coercive core: the Guards, the judiciary and the Supreme Leader’s household.
His retention in 2024 confirmed that his authority rested less on party politics than on trust from the system above elected government.
Under Khatib, the state increasingly treated social unrest as proof of foreign infiltration.
Protesters were not simply angry citizens. They were portrayed as nodes in an enemy network. Foreign-based Persian media were not just broadcasters. They were recast as operational arms of hostile states.
That logic also hardened into law.
Under his watch, the state broadened the definition of espionage and hostile collaboration, making it easier to turn contact, information-sharing, media work and loosely defined cooperation with enemy states or affiliated groups into national-security crimes.
The point was not only to punish spies. It was to widen the category of who could be treated like one.
The United States designated Khatib twice in September 2022, reflecting the breadth of his role across both overseas operations and domestic repression.
The Treasury first sanctioned him and the Intelligence Ministry over malicious cyber activity, including the disruption of Albanian government systems.
Later that month, it sanctioned him again, saying the ministry under his leadership had targeted human rights defenders, women’s rights activists, journalists, filmmakers and religious minorities, and had subjected detainees to torture in secret detention centers.
Years of the gallows
The intelligence ministry did not sign every death sentence. But the execution surge is still part of the meaning of Khatib’s tenure, because it formed the climate in which his security doctrine operated.
In the four full calendar years after he took office, Iran carried out at least 4,000 executions: about 580 in 2022, 830 in 2023, 975 in 2024 and 1,900 in 2025.
Those numbers belong formally to the judiciary and the prison system.
Politically, though, they sit inside the same larger story: a state that answered dissent, insecurity and social fracture with a heavier reliance on coercion, exemplary punishment and fear.
Operations beyond Iran
Khatib was also important beyond Iran’s borders. The ministry he led was accused by Western governments of directing cyber operations, targeting dissidents abroad and helping run the wider machinery of transnational repression.
His significance, though, was not that he was publicly tied to every individual plot.
It was that he sat atop a ministry that linked classic espionage, cyber activity, surveillance of exiles and operational cooperation with Iran’s other security arms.
In that sense he was less a field commander than a system manager, overseeing one part of Iran’s long war against opponents at home and abroad.
The glue
That coordinating role may be the most revealing part of his legacy.
Iran’s intelligence world is fragmented. The Intelligence Ministry, the IRGC Intelligence Organization, the judiciary and the Leader’s office all have their own stakes, rivalries and chains of command.
Khatib’s value was that he could move across those worlds.
He came from the Guards’ intelligence culture, served in the Leader’s protection orbit, worked closely with the judiciary and then ran the ministry that was supposed to give the system a more unified picture of the threat environment.
After the 2022 uprising, that became even more important.
The Islamic Republic needed its rival security organs to act less like competing fiefdoms and more like a single architecture.
Khatib helped provide that common language, one in which protest, activism, foreign media, exile politics, sabotage and espionage could all be placed on the same continuum of danger.
That is why Khatib mattered. He mattered because he helped normalize a broader idea: that almost any challenge to the Islamic Republic could be reclassified as infiltration.
In the end, that was his real achievement for the system he served. He helped make dissent legible as intelligence warfare.
Iranian authorities have issued stark warnings ahead of Chaharshanbeh Suri as officials point to what they describe as wartime conditions and the risk of unrest.
Police commander Ahmadreza Radan said this year’s celebrations come under “different circumstances,” adding that the country is effectively in a state of war and that emergency and medical services are on high alert.
He warned that adversaries could exploit the night’s gatherings, saying there is a possibility that “agents” could blend into crowds celebrating the festival and trigger incidents or casualties to inflame the situation.
In a separate notice, the Intelligence Ministry urged citizens to remain vigilant, claiming that “a small number of Israeli soldiers” may attempt sabotage during the festivities and calling on people to report suspicious activity.
The messaging has been reinforced by a broader security buildup. Reports indicate increased coordination among police, intelligence, and judicial bodies, alongside threats of decisive action against what officials describe as dangerous behavior.
In some areas, people have been encouraged to hold events in mosques and controlled spaces rather than in the streets.
Contest over public space, culture and control
Yet Chaharshanbeh Suri has rarely stayed contained.
Celebrated on the eve of the last Wednesday before Nowruz, the festival – marked by bonfires, fireworks, and the ritual of jumping over flames – predates Islam and has endured for centuries. In recent years, it has taken on an added meaning, evolving into one of the few nights when large numbers of people gather spontaneously in public spaces.
That scale has made it difficult to control. It has also turned the festival into a recurring flashpoint.
Last year, crowds across multiple cities poured into the streets despite heavy security presence. Clashes broke out in several areas, leaving at least 19 dead and thousands injured. Videos showed bonfires lighting up neighborhoods as music, chanting, and fireworks filled the air.
In earlier years, the night has gone further, with young people using firecrackers and homemade devices to confront security forces, chanting slogans, and in some cases burning photos of late Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
The pattern has become familiar: warnings ahead of the night, followed by mass turnout, and then confrontation.
This year, however, the backdrop is markedly different.
Iran is in the midst of an escalating conflict, with the United States and Israel striking targets linked to military and security structures. A strike announced on Tuesday killed the IRGC Basij commander Gholamreza Soleimani, a key figure in crowd control and repression.
Against that backdrop, officials have framed the festival not only as a safety concern but as a potential security threat.
‘A symbol of resilience’
Exiled Prince Reza Pahlavi, in an interview with Iran International earlier this week, said the festival carries a deeper meaning beyond tradition.
“When we celebrate Chaharshanbeh Suri today, it is not only to preserve our culture,” he said. “It is a powerful message to those who have always tried to erase our identity… an opportunity to show that we exist – to ourselves and to the world.”
He also pointed to a broader generational shift, saying: “Today everyone has reached the conclusion that a secular system is needed… a system built on ideology has, from the beginning, imposed discrimination on society.”
At the same time, he framed the preservation of cultural traditions as central to Iran’s resilience, adding that the country has endured “because of the courage of its people and the preservation of Iranian culture.”
His call to mark the night has been echoed among parts of the diaspora, including appeals for gatherings outside Iranian embassies, while inside the country officials have warned that participation could carry consequences.
The tension between these two narratives – celebration and control – is not new.
As analyst Morad Vaisi has noted, the confrontation over festivals like Nowruz and Chaharshanbeh Suri reflects a deeper struggle.
These traditions, he wrote, have endured not because of official backing, but because of people’s resistance to cultural pressure, becoming a symbol of identity and continuity beyond political systems.
Each year that people gather despite restrictions, the act itself sends a message that Iran’s cultural life extends beyond those in power.
That dynamic is expected to be on full display again tonight.
But this year, the familiar sounds of celebration will unfold alongside something heavier: a country under bombardment, a heightened security presence, and warnings that frame even small gatherings as a potential threat.
In past years, Chaharshanbeh Suri has often blurred the line between festivity and confrontation.
As darkness falls, that line may once again be tested – raising expectations of large turnouts, and concern that the night could end, as it has before, with violence and more lives lost.