Khamenei Is Dead — But the IRGC Is Already Plotting His Replacement: Why the US Should Reject a Cosmetic ‘Transition’

Over the weekend, Iranian state media officially confirmed the death of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. The 86-year-old ruler, who steered the Islamic Republic’s hostile foreign policy for nearly four decades, was killed in a devastating strike on Tehran’s deeply fortified underground command facilities.

While segments of the Iranian population have courageously taken to the streets in nationwide protests — tearing down regime banners and clashing with state security forces — the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is forcefully consolidating its grip. The IRGC, the regime’s true center of gravity, is not worried. Instead, it is executing a ruthless succession plan designed to preserve its theocratic-terror apparatus intact.

US intelligence reporting indicates that senior IRGC commanders and surviving intelligence chiefs are convening in secured, subterranean facilities near Qom and in the highly guarded northern districts of Tehran. Their immediate objective is clear: to install a controllable figurehead behind a veneer of constitutional continuity. They heavily favor Mojtaba Khamenei, a shadowy figure who has managed his father’s vast financial empire and cultivated deep ties with the security state. If not Mojtaba, the IRGC will elevate an uncompromising hardliner drawn from the Quds Force old guard. The goal is to maintain the ideological facade of the Islamic Republic while ensuring the military vanguard retains absolute authority over the country.

The IRGC has also threatened Iranians by text message that any protest or resistance will be met with death.

To placate the international community and stall for time, the IRGC is hastily assembling an interim leadership council. Headed by President Masoud Pezeshkian, Judiciary Chief Gholamhossein Mohseni-Ejei, and hardline cleric Ahmad Khatami, this council is meticulously designed to project a mirage of stability. However, this maneuver is emphatically not a transition; it is regime preservation by other means.

Beneath this civilian camouflage, the IRGC’s 150,000-strong military force, its absolute control over Iran’s ballistic-missile and clandestine nuclear programs, and its multibillion-dollar economic empire would remain completely untouched. This empire spans illicit oil smuggling networks, construction conglomerates, and cryptocurrency evasion nodes, all fueling a sprawling proxy architecture that includes Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis, and Iraqi militias.

Accepting a cosmetic transition of this nature would constitute a catastrophic strategic defeat for the United States and its regional allies. It would provide the battered IRGC with the exact breathing room it desperately needs to regroup, reconstitute its depleted missile inventory, and reactivate dormant terror cells positioned across Europe and North America. Recent ballistic missile attacks aimed at Israeli civilian centers and renewed rocket fire from Lebanon demonstrate that the IRGC’s operational capacity is far from broken. Any sanctions relief or diplomatic engagement with an IRGC-backed successor government would disastrously repeat the foundational errors of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal and the failed containment policies of prior administrations.

President Trump has correctly stated that the time for drawn-out negotiations has permanently passed. He now possesses a historically narrow window to convert this unprecedented military success into a lasting strategic victory. The United States must immediately freeze and aggressively redirect all remaining Iranian regime assets globally. This requires seizing billions in illicit oil revenues, intercepting crypto holdings, and shuttering front companies, then transferring these funds directly to credible opposition groups committed to a secular, non-nuclear Iran. Full political and material support must be extended to the Iranian resistance.

Maximum economic pressure must be ruthlessly enforced without exception. There can be zero sanctions relief until the IRGC’s command structure, parallel economy, and proxy networks are dismantled root and stem, accompanied by crippling secondary sanctions against Chinese and Russian enablers. Targeted kinetic operations, coordinated seamlessly with Israel, must continue unabated against remaining IRGC leadership nodes and nuclear infrastructure until their power-projection capability is irrevocably neutralized. The current moment is the first realistic opportunity for decisive regime change since 1979. Trump’s administration must firmly reject any illusion of a cosmetic transition and press relentlessly for total victory. The alternative is the regeneration of the very threat these strikes intended to eliminate.

Amine Ayoub, a fellow at the Middle East Forum, is a policy analyst and writer based in Morocco. Follow him on X: @amineayoubx