Who Runs Iran Now? A Hard-Line Military Band of Brothers.

NY Times-May21st2026

May 21, 2026Updated 10:08 a.m. ET

When Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader for 37 years, was killed by Israel on Feb. 28, in the opening airstrike of the war against the Islamic Republic, he was succeeded by his son, Mojtaba.

But at 86, the ayatollah had wielded a level of influence that no replacement could soon match.

Senior Iranian officials maintain that all key matters are run by the 56-year-old heir. Decision making, however, extends beyond one man, experts say, guided by a small, elite band of mostly current or former senior commanders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.

It is not the Guards as an organization that is exerting control, they say, but a hardened “band of brothers,” whose seminal experience was the brutal, eight-year war between Iran and Iraq that began in 1980.

Founded in 1979 to safeguard the newborn revolution and its leader, the Guards promoted these commanders to generals while they were still in their late 20s or early 30s. Western support for Iraq in the war convinced them that Iran had to forge its own way no matter what the cost.

After the war, they went on to control intelligence or security services. Most are believed to have some personal connection with Mojtaba Khamenei from the long years that he directed his father’s office.

These men are among the hardest-line figures in the country — militants not only in terms of perpetuating the Islamic revolution, but also in the harsh methods they have championed while running the main organs of government repression.

Their shared backgrounds, careers and ideological outlook are one reason the war has neither collapsed the government nor paralyzed it, despite the deaths of about 50 top political and military leaders, experts said.

Whatever jockeying may be taking place among these central figures over whether to seek a pragmatic end to the conflict remains largely opaque. Some shunned the limelight even before the war. Now they now remain hidden for fear of being targeted.

Here are some of the most powerful figures in Iran today.

Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf, 64

A man wearing glasses and a dark suit speaking. He gestures with a raised finger, wearing a prominent red ring on one hand. — Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, in 2025.Credit…Arash Khamooshi/Polaris for The New York Times

The speaker of the Iranian Parliament since 2020, Mr. Ghalibaf has served as commander of the Guards air force and chief of the national police, as well as the mayor of Tehran.

Mr. Ghalibaf once boasted that during anti-government demonstrations in 1999, despite his rank, he had ridden on the back of a motorcycle like an ordinary militiaman to beat protesters with sticks.

In 2004, he ran for president and tried to change his image. “He showed up on election day looking like Don Johnson on ‘Miami Vice,’” donning a white suit and sunglasses instead of his uniform, said Afshon Ostovar, author of “Vanguard of the Imam,” a history of the Guards. It was a failed attempt to appeal to middle-class voters, and made some conservative supporters suspect his ambitions.

Mr. Ghalibaf is something of a bridge between the political and military elite. Considered a pragmatic figure, he negotiated directly with the United States in Pakistan last month. Some detractors suspect that he seeks a peace deal that will make him an Iranian strongman.