Iran Under the Supreme Leader’s Cloak: Who Controls the Decision Between War, Negotiation, and Succession?

What is actually advancing is a more disciplined style of decision-making organized around one overriding objective: protecting the regime. If that objective requires hardline policies, the system will produce hardline policies. If it requires negotiations, the system will produce negotiations.

The overlap of authorities functions as a mechanism of survival rather than a sign of weakness.

Ghalibaf’s importance lies in his role as a link between the Revolutionary Guard and the state.

The Revolutionary Guard is the ideological guardian of the regime. It is not merely a military institution; it carries the state’s vision of security, revolution, and order, and sees itself as responsible for protecting the essence of the regime rather than simply the borders of the state.

It is also the strategic executor of higher policies because it controls missile capabilities, asymmetric naval forces, regional networks, and unconventional deterrence tools, making any major foreign or security policy decision impossible to implement without it.

The Revolutionary Guard exercises an undeclared institutional veto.

The balance among institutions has tilted in favor of the security sector.

Decision-making in Iran today is shaped by the imperative of regime survival. The question “Who decides now?” cannot be separated from the question “What kind of system is now emerging?”

Introduction: War as a Test of Decision-Making Structures, Not Only Military Capacity

The recent war did not only alter what Iran is capable of doing; it also changed the way it decides what it should do. The Iranian system entered this confrontation based on a relatively familiar formula: a Supreme Leader who retains ultimate legitimacy, a Revolutionary Guard with extensive influence, a presidency and government that manage part of the executive sphere, and parallel institutions with overlapping authorities operating under one umbrella. However, the strikes that targeted the top of the hierarchy and an important part of the leadership structure pushed this system into a different kind of test: not merely a test of military resilience, but a test of the continuity of decision-making itself under the pressures of assassination, war, and leadership transition.

In this context, the central question in understanding Iran today has become: how is power reproduced when its apex is disrupted, and when the need expands for rapid decisions on war, negotiations, and internal security simultaneously?

Recent indicators suggest that Iran has not moved toward a power vacuum, yet it no longer functions according to the same rigid hierarchical image that characterized earlier years. Instead, it now appears closer to a more collective, more security-driven, and less transparent decision-making structure, within which the Supreme National Security Council has emerged as the practical center of gravity. At the same time, the relative weight of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and figures associated with it has increased, while the ability of elected institutions to exercise independent initiative has declined.

Recent reports have described this scene as resembling a collective leadership body in which centers of influence and institutional roles overlap. Within this framework, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf has emerged as a political and negotiating face, while security and Guard-linked figures such as Ahmad Vahidi and Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr have gained greater prominence within the most influential circles.

This article is built around the argument that decision-making in Iran is no longer managed through the traditional formula that places the Supreme Leader as a singular center coordinating among institutions. Instead, it has entered a transitional phase marked by multiple centers of decision-making operating within a collective security framework led by institutions and personalities closely aligned with the Revolutionary Guard and the Supreme National Security Council. At the same time, the effective weight of elected civilian institutions has declined, while ultimate legitimacy remains linked to the position of the Supreme Leader, though no longer with full monopoly over the mechanisms of day-to-day decision-making.

First: From the Centrality of the Supreme Leader to Controlled Security Pluralism

For a long time, the Iranian system could be understood through the figure of the Supreme Leader as the central pivot managing the balance among various institutions and resolving disputes when they reached their limits. Yet the recent war demonstrated that this formula alone no longer explains what is taking place inside the system. Following the death of Ali Khamenei and the succession of Mojtaba Khamenei under wartime conditions marked by relative invisibility and ambiguity over how he exercises power, a relative vacuum emerged at the center of direct personal leadership. This vacuum has been filled through a more collective mechanism.

This does not mean that the position of the Supreme Leader has disappeared. Mojtaba Khamenei derives formal legitimacy from the decision of the Assembly of Experts and is still regarded as holding the highest authority in principle. Yet, at least for now, he does not appear to occupy the same position as his father in terms of the deeply rooted personal ability to manage all lines of decision-making directly and openly.

Here lies the most important transformation: decision-making in Iran no longer moves simply from a clearly defined apex of power down to the rest of the institutions. Instead, it now operates through a denser network of overlapping centers in which senior security institutions play the leading role. Recent reports indicate that the Supreme National Security Council is now “at the center of power,” and that the war further enhanced its influence after Ali Khamenei himself had already begun granting it greater authority before his death. This suggests that Iran is not witnessing the collapse of its governing structure, but rather a reorganization within that structure itself, where the relative weakening of an individual center is compensated for by strengthening a collective body capable of integrating military, civilian, security, and negotiating functions simultaneously.

This shift can be understood as a transition from personal centrality to controlled security pluralism. Iran is not evolving into an open collective system in which institutions are equal. Instead, it is moving toward a formula in which ultimate authority remains symbolically and legally attached to the Supreme Leader, while the sensitive day-to-day management of state affairs shifts to a narrow network of security and political actors directly linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Supreme National Security Council.

In this sense, power today is not equally distributed, yet it is also no longer monopolized by one visible center in the way it once was. This helps explain why Iran appears capable of functioning under pressure without being entirely clear about who issues the final decision in every policy area.

Under this heading, an important sub-theme emerges: overlapping authorities as a mechanism of survival rather than a sign of weakness. Many external readings tend to treat ambiguity in the Iranian decision-making structure as evidence of confusion or fragmentation. Yet recent developments suggest that this overlap is part of the system’s design. According to recent reporting by the Associated Press, Ali Vaez argued that factionalism is “built into the DNA of the system,” and that the multiplicity of power centers and overlapping authorities was one of the reasons the regime survived even after the targeting of its leadership and senior figures.

This means that the absence of full clarity is not always a flaw in the Iranian governing structure; it may also be a way of absorbing shocks and preventing institutional paralysis when a particular individual or center is struck. In other words, ambiguity in Iran is not merely a dysfunction; it is also a tool of governance.

This leads to an important analytical conclusion: the study of decision-making in Iran can no longer rely solely on constitutional texts or on tracing a formal hierarchy as though institutions operate mechanically. The war revealed that the Iranian state contains within it a relatively flexible structure for redistributing authority during major crises. Although this flexibility increases overlap and opacity, it also gives the system a greater capacity for survival, especially during moments of leadership transition or war.[1]

As a result, the question “Who rules Iran?” has become less useful than asking: how is decision-making authority distributed among interconnected and competing centers operating under a single security umbrella?

Second: The Supreme National Security Council as the New Decision-Making Chamber

If the broader transformation lies in the shift from individual centrality to security pluralism, then the institution that embodies this transition more than any other is the Supreme National Security Council. This body no longer appears to function merely as a bureaucratic coordination framework among state institutions. In practice, it has become the most sensitive decision-making chamber, where issues of war, negotiations, internal security, succession, and institutional restructuring intersect.

Recent reports have indicated clearly that the council now sits at the center of real power after the war, bringing together senior civilian and military officials while the influence of the security camp within it has grown stronger during the crisis.

The council’s strength lies both in its composition and in its function. It brings together the presidency, the Supreme Leader’s representative, Revolutionary Guard commanders, and executive institutions in a single forum, allowing military, negotiating, and strategic decisions to be merged into one process. Yet the war altered the balance of power within this platform itself. Although the presidency remains formally present, the security and Guard presence has become denser, while hardline and Guard-linked figures have moved into central positions, among them Ahmad Vahidi and Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr.

The latter was appointed secretary of the council on March 24, 2026, succeeding Ali Larijani, who was killed in an Israeli strike. This is a significant development because it links the council’s executive secretariat directly to a heavyweight military-security figure with deep ties to both the Revolutionary Guard and the security state.

This rise has made the council increasingly resemble a “fusion platform” between the formal state and the security state. It no longer merely coordinates among pre-existing institutions; it has become the arena where the main threads of decision-making are gathered, especially on issues related to negotiations with the United States, war management, control over strategic waterways, and the reconstruction of military institutions.

The establishment of the Supreme National Defense Council after the June 2026 war, by decision of the Supreme National Security Council itself, further confirms that the security establishment is not only managing the crisis but also reproducing new institutional tools within the state to entrench the priority of the defense and military perspective in the post-war phase.

Within this framework, the importance of Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf emerges as a key link between the Revolutionary Guard and the state. Ghalibaf matters not only as an individual figure, but as a model of the new Iranian decision-maker. He combines a Guard background, executive experience, deep ties across state institutions, and the ability to move between competing camps.

Recent reports have described Ghalibaf as the council’s most prominent public face and the lead negotiator with the United States. Analysts cited by the Associated Press have argued that he is best positioned to bridge divisions among factions because of his standing within the Revolutionary Guard, his ties with conservatives, and the support he has increasingly received from reformists and centrists in the context of war and negotiations.

This places him in the role of an intermediary between “institutional legitimacy” and “security capability,” as well as between pragmatic discourse and the need to secure decisions that both the state and the Revolutionary Guard can sustain and implement.

Here, the deeper significance of the council becomes clear. The fact that Ghalibaf stands at its forefront, rather than the president serving as the primary public face of decision-making, reflects the reality that Iran no longer manages its major files solely through the formal constitutional order. Decision-making has not simply moved to a new individual figure; it has shifted into a relatively closed institutional arena in which influence belongs to those who can combine security credentials, political acceptability, and executive capacity.[2]

In this sense, the Supreme National Security Council represents more than a repositioning of one institution. It reflects a relatively new logic of governance: disciplined collectivism under a security umbrella.

Third: The Rise of the Revolutionary Guard from Executive Instrument to Decision-Making Partner

It is no longer sufficient to say that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has become influential in Iranian decision-making, because it has been influential for many years. What is new today is that the Revolutionary Guard is no longer merely the most powerful institution or the strongest executive apparatus; it has become a direct partner in the making of sovereign decisions themselves.

Its role no longer consists only of implementing decisions made above it or influencing outcomes informally from the outside. Instead, it has become embedded in the mechanisms through which decisions are produced, through personalities, institutions, veto powers, and tools that cannot be bypassed.

This role can be broken down into three levels. First, the Revolutionary Guard serves as the ideological guardian of the system. It is not merely a military institution; it is the bearer of the state’s vision of security, revolution, and order, and it sees itself as responsible for protecting the essence of the regime rather than simply the borders of the state.

Second, it is the strategic executor of higher policies because it controls Iran’s missile capabilities, asymmetric naval forces, regional proxy networks, and unconventional deterrence tools. This means that no major decision in foreign or security policy can realistically be implemented without it.

Third, the Revolutionary Guard exercises an undeclared institutional veto. Any major negotiation, external settlement, or sensitive political opening cannot be stabilized or implemented if it encounters firm resistance from the Guard. This makes it a partner in determining the ceiling of decision-making rather than merely an actor operating within that ceiling.

The crisis surrounding the Strait of Hormuz provides a precise example of this transformation. Reports from the Associated Press indicated that Abbas Araghchi announced the reopening of the strait to commercial shipping as part of a ceasefire understanding, only for the military establishment to announce hours later that it would be closed again in response to the American blockade.[3]

Soon after, criticism emerged from Tasnim News Agency, which is closely aligned with the Revolutionary Guard, arguing that decisions regarding the strait should come from the Supreme National Security Council rather than from the Foreign Ministry alone. This example reveals more than a tactical disagreement; it exposes the structure of decision-making itself. Foreign policy in Iran is no longer a domain controlled by the Foreign Ministry as a specialized institution. Instead, it has become a space in which negotiations intersect with military security, the Revolutionary Guard intersects with the council, and diplomacy intersects with deterrence considerations. In this way, the Guard becomes part of defining the decision itself, not only implementing it.[4]

Under this heading, another important shift emerges: the balance among institutions has tilted decisively in favor of the security sector. The presidency and government still exist, and civilian institutions have not disappeared formally, but the capacity to monopolize initiative has moved away from them.

The rise of a national security secretary with a Guard background, the presence of figures such as Ahmad Vahidi and Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr within the influential core, and the emergence of Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf rather than the president as the public face of negotiations all point to the fact that Iran’s civilian state now plays more of an administrative and legitimizing role than a central role in decisions of war and peace.

This does not mean that the Revolutionary Guard rules alone. It means that the logic of security has become the framework within which all other institutions are arranged.

This interpretation gains further strength from American debates about the future of Iran’s supreme leadership. The Washington Institute for Near East Policy has argued that Mojtaba Khamenei, because of his strong ties to the Revolutionary Guard, may lean toward more hardline choices and greater reliance on asymmetric deterrence if his position stabilizes.

If that occurs, the Revolutionary Guard may become not only the main supporter of the new Supreme Leader but also the principal pillar of the next leadership model itself. In that scenario, Iranian decision-making would become less distinct in terms of the separation between the religious institution and the military institution, and more inclined toward a model led by an alliance between supreme legitimacy and the security apparatus that sustains it.

Fourth: The Decline of the Presidency and the Rise of the Logic of Regime Survival

To complete the analysis, it is not enough to identify who has risen; it is equally important to clarify who has declined. The presidency is the clearest institution whose effective ability to shape major decisions has weakened. Masoud Pezeshkian remains president, and his name is still formally linked to the chairmanship of the Supreme National Security Council and to some newer institutions such as the Supreme National Defense Council. Yet current indicators suggest that his position in major decision-making is limited, especially during wartime and in the context of leadership transition.

The Soufan Center has described pragmatists,[5] including Pezeshkian, as “nearly powerless,” while the Associated Press has shown that the council the president nominally chairs in fact contains more influential centers of gravity, including the Supreme Leader’s representative, Revolutionary Guard commanders, and the speaker of parliament.

This decline does not mean that the presidency has disappeared from the scene. Rather, it means that its role has been redefined within a narrower framework. The presidency can still manage some executive matters and may participate in giving decisions an official institutional form. However, it no longer appears capable of leading strategic choices or imposing an independent agenda on issues such as war, negotiations, or succession.

This is consistent with the broader transformation revealed by the war: elected institutions are no longer the main practical reference point on major issues. Instead, they operate within limits defined by a higher security logic. In this context, discussions of a “reformist presidency” or a “pragmatic presidency” become less important than the question of how much room the security structure allows such a presidency to move.

Under this heading, the most important idea emerges: decision-making in Iran today is increasingly produced according to the standard of regime survival. War, sanctions, economic pressure, and the risk of unrest have pushed the survival imperative ahead of other ideological and institutional considerations.

The Associated Press reported clearly that the leadership’s overriding priority remains survival, and that economic deterioration and pressure on oil trade increase the value of any deal or de-escalation that can reduce threats to the regime’s internal cohesion. It also cited Ali Vaez as arguing that it is easier to imagine the system making concessions to the West in order to ensure regime survival than making concessions to its own population if those concessions would weaken internal control.

This is a crucial observation because it allows Iranian decision-making to be understood not only as ideological or security-driven, but also as survival-oriented. Every major decision is measured against one central question: does it protect the cohesion of the regime, or does it expose it to instability?

From here emerges the importance of pragmatism without liberalization. Iran may demonstrate negotiating flexibility, tactical openness, or a willingness to de-escalate, yet this does not necessarily mean the rise of a reformist current in the conventional sense, nor does it necessarily reflect a deep ideological revision.

More accurately, such pragmatism may itself be an instrument of survival managed by the security system in order to buy time, ease sanctions, prevent social unrest, and reorganize internal balances after the war. For this reason, any flexibility in rhetoric or diplomacy should not be read too quickly as a return to moderation. It may instead reflect a rational security tactic designed to preserve the continuity of rule.

In this sense, the decline of the presidency does not necessarily open the way for rigid ideological domination with no room for pragmatism, nor does it signal the victory of a civilian negotiating current. What is actually advancing is a style of decision-making more tightly organized around one overriding objective: protecting the regime.

If that objective requires hardline policies, the system will produce hardline policies. If it requires negotiations, the system will produce negotiations. In both cases, however, the ultimate reference point is neither the ballot box nor government balances, but the preservation of survival within a security state that is being reorganized after the war.

Fifth: Succession and the Reconfiguration of Supreme Authority in Iran

It is impossible to understand decision-making in Iran today without incorporating the question of succession into the analysis. The war did not occur during a moment of leadership stability. Instead, it coincided with a sharp transition at the top of the system following the death of Ali Khamenei and the succession of Mojtaba Khamenei.

A February 2026 report by the Council on Foreign Relations indicated that the succession issue had already been open and that one possible scenario involved Iran moving toward a more authoritarian structure in which military and security elements gain greater formal or semi-formal prominence. In this sense, the war did not merely alter the balance among existing institutions; it also accelerated the testing of what the next form of supreme authority might look like.[6]

Three subsidiary scenarios can be proposed here. The first is that the current arrangement is temporary and that the present model of collective security governance is merely a transitional mechanism until the new Supreme Leader consolidates his position and imposes his full authority.

The second is that Iran is genuinely moving toward a model in which the Supreme Leader is weaker while security institutions become stronger, meaning that ultimate legitimacy remains religious in character, but real management increasingly shifts toward an alliance among the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the Supreme National Security Council, and other senior security institutions.

The third is that the system may preserve the formal centrality of the Supreme Leader while in practice transforming into a more collective structure of decision-making, in which the council, the Revolutionary Guard, and figures close to the leadership office become part of the daily leadership process rather than simply assisting it.

Each of these scenarios finds at least partial support in current developments. This makes Iran today look less like a state that has simply returned to its pre-war condition and more like a laboratory for the reconstruction of political authority.

The position of Mojtaba Khamenei himself adds another layer of complexity. He reached the office through a formal decision by the Assembly of Experts and has close ties to the Revolutionary Guard. Yet he also faces domestic sensitivity linked to the idea of hereditary succession, along with criticism from figures who viewed his selection as evidence of the reproduction of power within a single family.

This raises the possibility that he may depend more heavily on the security establishment to compensate for what he may lack in terms of personal authority or natural acceptance compared with his father. If this assessment is correct, then war and succession together are pushing Iran toward a governing formula in which the Supreme Leader retains ultimate legitimacy while relying more than ever on a dense security-institutional alliance.

For this reason, the question “Who decides now?” cannot be separated from the question “What kind of system is now emerging?” The current scene may represent not only the management of a wartime crisis, but also the beginning of a new model of Iranian governance in which the older distinctions between the Supreme Leader, the Revolutionary Guard, and the senior councils become less pronounced in favor of a more integrated structure among these levels.

If this trajectory continues, studying Iran in the future will require moving beyond the traditional binary of “hardliners” and “reformists” in favor of a more precise reading focused on the alliances among security institutions, succession dynamics, legitimacy, and closed elite institutions.

Conclusion: Iran Today Between Supreme Legitimacy and Collective Security Rule

What post-war Iran reveals is that decision-making can no longer be understood through the constitution alone, through the image of the Supreme Leader alone, or through the binary of hardliners and reformists that has often dominated earlier literature. The center of gravity has shifted elsewhere: toward a more collective security-political network in which the Supreme National Security Council has emerged as the most important decision-making chamber, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has expanded its role as a decisive partner, and the presidency has lost much of its capacity for independent initiative.

At the same time, the survival of the regime has become the practical reference point linking war, negotiations, succession, and the management of domestic affairs.

Iran today does not appear to be facing an immediate collapse of authority, yet neither is it simply returning to its pre-war structure. More accurately, the country is moving from personal centrality toward a form of disciplined security oligarchy: a system in which power is distributed among overlapping institutions and personalities, while the Supreme Leader retains ultimate legitimacy without fully monopolizing the daily process of decision-making.

For this reason, understanding Iran at this stage requires moving beyond the question “Who is the strongest man?” toward a deeper question: how are decisions produced inside a state in which war has reconnected security with succession, linked negotiations to survival, and moved the military institution from the margins of influence to the center of rule?

This is the real transformation shaping Iran today, and it is likely to shape its regional trajectory in the coming period as well.

[1] https://apnews.com/article/iran-us-war-leadership-24061a2a22ea5d74d3df89149ebcc3da

[2]

[3] https://apnews.com/article/iran-us-war-leadership-24061a2a22ea5d74d3df89149ebcc3da

[4] https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/what-kind-supreme-leader-would-mojtaba-khamenei-be

[5] https://thesoufancenter.org/intelbrief-2026-march-26/

[6] https://www.cfr.org/reports/leadership-transition-in-iran