THE NEW YORK TIMES: Decision making in the country is guided by a small group of men associated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.
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. » | Neil MacFarquhar | Thursday, May 21, 2026
