As the United States deploys military assets for potential military action against the Islamic Republic of Iran, Washington faces a strategic choice. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei may be the tip of the iceberg, but the Assembly of Experts—an eighty-eight-member hand-picked clerical body—remains “locked and loaded” to choose a successor to replace him and sustain the Islamic governing system.
The Islamic Republic’s constitution charges the Assembly of Experts to select and supervise the Islamic Republic’s supreme leadership. The Shi’i jurists who constitute its chairman, leadership board, and internal committees, ensure the continuation of clerical rule under the doctrine of Velayat-e Faqih (Guardianship of the Jurist).
Candidates for this body must be senior Shi’i scholars who pass examination and receive approval from the Guardian Council. This body is influenced and appointed by the Supreme Leader himself, with five members serving on the Assembly.
The Islamic Republic’s constitution charges the Assembly of Experts to select and supervise the Islamic Republic’s supreme leadership.
The Assembly’s proper role was exposed following the death of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. The Assembly amended the Islamic constitution to allow Khomeini’s chosen successor, Khamenei, to qualify and become the next Supreme Leader, despite his lack of top religious credentials. This action established the entity as less a deliberative body and more a rubber stamp to normalize backroom deals negotiated among the supreme leader and the heads of various political factions.
Even today, the Supreme Leader influences the Assembly, which expresses support for the regime’s repressive behavior at home and abroad, and a hatred for both the West and Israel. Many of its members frame state violence as a religious obligation, providing justifications for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ support for terror proxies in the region and internal security forces’ actions against peaceful protestors.
Take, for example the Assembly’s current chairman, Ayatollah Mohammad Ali Movahedi Kermani: He has decades-long ties to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and has declared messaging platforms like Telegram religiously forbidden. Other prominent members include Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami, a Guardian Council member who often leads Friday prayer in Tehran and has called for the execution of protestors. Ayatollah Seyyed Hashem Hosseini Bushehri, another member of the Assembly of Experts, vowed that uranium enrichment for the regime’s nuclear program would never halt despite U.S. demands.
Whether or not the Assembly of Experts is independent or a rubber stamp, it is still the body through which any successor claims legitimacy. As Khamenei nears his eighty-seventh birthday, he has faced a number of health crises. Succession looms. Ayatollahs such as Ahmed Hosseini Khorasani, who have praised the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as the armed guardians of the Islamic Republic and Abbas Ka’bi, who endorsed amputations of toes and fingers for protesters in the aftermath of the 2022 Iranian protests, seek to outdo their colleagues in terms of their conservative Islamic beliefs as they position themselves to replace Khamenei.
The Assembly provides the religious justification for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ actions.
Those who claim that removing Khamenei in the event of a military action would trigger an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps coup only address part of the machinations that will mark the Tehran power struggle. The Assembly provides the religious justification for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ actions, and those leading the Corps adhere to the ruling clergy; they mutually reinforce one another.
If the Trump administration is serious about bringing about a decisive end to the Islamic Republic, it should end the clerical conveyor belt economically and militarily. Economically, the administration should enact and enforce harsh economic sanctions against members of the Assembly and their family members, friends, and overseas assets.
Militarily, Trump and the Pentagon should seek to disrupt the Assembly’s ability to meet and appoint any clerical successor. The resulting vacuum could provide space and an opportunity for other Iranians unaffiliated with the regime to fill the vacuum. Seeking to extract leading members of the Assembly of Experts to face trial in a future Iran would be a worthy investment and create a sharp dividing line between the Islamic Republic and any successor.
The Islamic Republic might be a dictatorship, but removing the dictator alone will not be enough. The real clerical establishment rests in Najaf, Iraq. Those clerics who prop up the Assembly of Experts represent “Mofsed-e-filarz” (“Corruption on Earth”) and should pay the price for their crimes.
