Iran’s power struggle: Who actually controls decision-making in Tehran now?

Who really runs Iran? With top leaders assassinated and a new ayatollah yet to appear in public, many suspect it's the military who's in control. So with President Trump saying the U.S. could stop the war in 2 to 3 weeks, could Iran be left with a military dictatorship rather than a theological one? I'm Andrea Sankey, and this is The Newsmakers. The U.S.-Israeli war on Iran has entered a second month with the potential for frightening unintended consequences growing by the day. As the Turkish expression goes, the one who comes makes you miss the one who left. And in the case of Iran, it's possible that the reformist president and newly appointed Supreme Leader are being supplanted by the Revolutionary Guard Corps and its feared Basij security apparatus. The fear now is that that could become a permanent reality once the conflict ends. Here's a look.

After weeks of unrelenting strikes, the face of Iran's leadership has changed. But its new direction is uncertain, and those in charge may soon be picking up the pieces.

We hit them hard. We got rid of a lot of the radicalized lunatics along the Strait. But if they want something— but I would say that within 2 weeks, maybe 2 weeks, maybe 3.

President Trump may be setting a timeline, but any next phase will depend on decisions taken in Tehran. And on who is actually making them. Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei has not been seen in public since his appointment, while senior figures around him, including the National Security Council Secretary Ali Larijani, have been killed. Even President Massoud Pazeshkian, elected on a reformist platform, appears to have had little visible role in shaping the course of the war. The Revolutionary Guards have always been central to Iran's system, but as the war has unfolded, their role appears to have moved further forward. A force of around 190,000 embedded across both the military and the state now sits at the center of how decisions are formed and carried out. Strategy is now shaped inside bodies where the Guards play a dominant role, from the National Security Council to figures like the parliamentary speaker Mohammad Kalibaf, who rose through the ranks of the Guards, and the IRGC apparatchik Mohammad Zughalder, who replaced Larijani. Alongside that, a Defense Council functions as a war room, while operational control runs through Qa'tam al-Anbiah, the Guards' central command overseeing Iran's most advanced missile systems.

I think the net effect, which was probably going to happen anyway, is that we've seen the end of the theocracy. Actually, with the end of Ali Khamenei, his successor was never going to be as powerful as he was. That's kind of it. And in Mojtaba, although he's ostensibly a cleric, he doesn't have his father's credentials. You basically see an IRGC takeover.

And that structure extends beyond the battlefield. The Basij, the Guard's internal security arm, has been broken into thousands of small mobile units dispersed across cities after repeated strikes. The Guards themselves are organized into regional commands, each able to operate with a degree of independence if central control is disrupted, including in places like the Strait of Hormuz.

They gave the, they being the Israelis, the Americans, they gave the Iranian leadership, deep state, some time to configure all of this. They've developed their succession, their lines of succession. They've evolved command and control structures. So I think in a way, ironically, the Americans and the Israelis have given a breath of life into that regime.

So the question is no longer who just leads Iran. It is whether power there is still political or whether it is now exercised through a military system built to survive, adapt, and act on its own.

So joining me now to look further at Iran's leadership are, from Geneva, Iran Project Director at the International Crisis Group, Ali Vaez. From London, Middle East analyst Avshin Shahi. And from Washington, former U.S. Secret Service officer Barry Donadio. Thank you all so much for being with me. Ali, I'll start with you. How likely is it that Israel, the U.S., and Iran, for that matter, will suffer a case of the one who comes makes you miss the one who left? In Israel's case in particular, I mean, they might remember kind of undermining the PLO only to end up with Hamas. So have they potentially done the same here now in Iran?

Well, I think this has already happened. The new cast of characters who are in charge of the third Islamic Republic are much more hardline, much more radicalized. You can just look at the new national security adviser, Mohammad Bagher Zolqadr, who replaced the relative pragmatic figure Ali Larijani. Who was involved in statecraft and negotiations for a long time. Just to give you an anecdote of how hardline Mr. Zolghadr is, when he was appointed as deputy commander of the Revolutionary Guards in the 1990s, General Soleimani resigned because he thought he would be so much of a hawk and a hardliner to work with. And the Supreme Leader had to bring back Soleimani and give him command of the expeditionary force of the Revolutionary Guards, the Quds Force, so that he would have a direct line of reporting to the Supreme Leader and not to Mr. Zolofahdreh as a superior. The most powerful man today in Iran, Speaker of Parliament Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, is also a commander of the Revolutionary Guards. The new commander of the Guards, Mr. Vahidi, has been involved in repression in Iran for a very long time. Was involved in the bombing of the Jewish center in Argentina many years ago. So, I'm afraid President Trump and Netanyahu have managed to replace the Islamic Republic's leadership, old and decaying leadership, with a much younger and much more radical and hardline cast of characters.

In any case, we still have President Trump saying that He's talking to Iran and Iran has just said it wants a ceasefire. We won't get into that debate, but still curious to find out exactly who's saying this and if anyone is actually involved in dialogue. But Afshin, let me come to you and ask if you agree with Ali's analysis there and also how much power right now does President Raisi really have? Apparently, from reports I've read, he couldn't even appoint a new intelligence minister. Is he almost a symbolic figure now, or is he still in charge along with the Supreme Leader?

He is definitely, he's treated like a symbolic figure. But in order to respond to your initial question, if I have time, allow me to give you a little bit of a context. Your guest mentioned that actually Because of the ongoing war and because of the ongoing dynamics, the people who are replacing the assassinated people by far are more radical and more extremist. But we need to understand this within, within a context. In my opinion, the Islamic Republic, at least the way that we knew it until about a month ago, is completely dead, is done and dusted. You know, over the last 48 years, you know, Islamic Republic has gone through different transitions. But what has happened over the last month has marked probably the most important transition from a type of theocracy to a garrison state. And the emergence of this garrison state is nothing surprising, and it should not be understood in isolation. This transition has been in the making at least for the last 30 years, and some people argue that practically it started from the very end of Iran-Iraq War, particularly Since the end, the end of the first term of Ahmadinejad's presidency, we began to see basically IRGC mobilizing and organizing and monopolizing effectively every dimension of power. About 60% of the economy is already controlled by IRGC. And the very fact that now basically the politicians, the civilian politicians, are effectively sidelined and replaced by more kind of hard hardcore, zealous extremist IRGC figures, I think is nothing surprising and it's only manifestation of the ongoing power dynamics within the state.

Okay, so perhaps going from deep state status to admitted status now, possibly. But let me ask Barry, if you are, I guess, as confident then as President Trump that the US has gotten rid of the radicalized lunatics that he says were at the helm?

Yeah, I think both of your guests come up with brilliant analysis of the certain possibility, and until we have some leader present themselves, we won't know for sure. So we have to go by what President Trump is saying, and what President Trump is saying that, yeah, they want a ceasefire. He said there is a regime change. He said And we don't know who he's talking about, by the way. But he's— he is saying on his Truth Social that, yeah, there's a new leader and he's nothing like the other ones. And it's somebody that we want to talk to and they are talking to. Now, the big question, who is it? What I can tell you in this war right now, who's in charge of Iran? It certainly seems to be the United States of America and Israel or the Air Force of Okay. Because we are controlling the skies above an entire country and including the Navy. We have complete naval and air superiority over a country that only 6 months ago said that it could never be done and no one in the world thought it could be done. So I say right now they are talking. We're going to learn a lot here at 9 p.m. when the president comes on, on television and makes his case for what's going to happen next.

Barry, I'll ask this as diplomatically as possible. Do you accept the theory that President Trump might be lying and that he's not actually speaking to this new regime he says is in power?

So I don't believe the president would be lying in any way, shape, or form to hurt anybody or do anything to be devious. Remember, we're in a war, and part of propaganda of war is deception. He could very well be playing part of in this war and deceiving the opponents. They're watching television, too. And we know that President Trump is a master of not being able to be really figured out or predictable. So this could be part of it. He could be telling some stuff that just simply is a little bit off to show our opponents and make them believe something. So I think all of us, including myself, at 9 p.m. here, Eastern Standard Time in Washington, we're going to be watching. And let's see what the president says.

Yeah.

So, Ali, I mean, he's not lying. According to Barry, it's just part of a strategy. First of all, do you agree there? And then moving on to whether you think the U.S. and Israel have really swatted, you know, the proverbial hornet's nest here, and that instead of having the decision-making center grounded in Tehran, it's now spread across multiple cells throughout the country?

Well, you started with a Turkish saying. Let me use another saying, which is that if you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there. I think President Trump did not understand the political structure in Iran. He believed that it was a totalitarian state, just like in North Korea, or in Syria, or in Iraq's— under Saddam, that if you decapitate the system, the rest of the system will collapse, which absolutely was not the case in Iran. And even what he put out in social media today, saying that the new Iranian president is asking for a ceasefire. President Pashinyan has been in office since July 2024. So I'm not sure the president really understands what he's dealing with here. That's number one. Number two, having superiority over air and in the sea doesn't mean you control a country. I have to remind Barry that we did control air and sea and land in Afghanistan, and the United States lost to the Taliban. We spent 20 years and $2 trillion to replace the Taliban with the Taliban, and now we've spent Tens of billions of dollars, American lives have been lost. And if this war continues and escalates, there will be much higher cost in terms of blood and treasure and reputation for the United States, because this is an illegal war, even based on US law, because there's no consent of Congress here. But with all of that, we have so far replaced a 56-year-old Khamenei an 86-year-old Khamenei with a 56-year-old Khamenei. And as I said, we have empowered the most hardline elements within that system, who is still fighting, who is still firing rockets and missiles towards Israel and U.S. allies and U.S. assets in the region. And it is still taking the global economy hostage by closing the Strait of Hormuz. So, I don't— I'm sure President Trump will have a narrative of victory tonight. But if you really look at it, I don't see how he can come out of this victorious.

Barry, I'll let you respond quickly. And I mean, would you accept there's a possibility of the basic logic that bad can get a lot worse?

Well, yeah, of course bad could get a lot worse. Of course there could be an insurgency in Iran if we put ground troops on the ground. Of course, these are all possibilities. And, you know, just one point about my definition of losing a war may be very, very different than his definition of losing a war. When, when somebody loses a war, I'm thinking that another country completely controls that country that lost. And we're not controlled by the Taliban. There's not Pashtun language on the US dollar. We didn't lose a war. We were there. We dominated. We, we never lost anything. We pulled out—

trillions of dollars. Sorry, trillions of dollars were lost. And so many lives.

Of course, as in any war, trillions of dollars and lives, unfortunately, to back down the Taliban who was protecting Osama bin Laden and terrorism. And that was a reaction to September 11th, 2001, where I lost personal friends in the towers. So that's yet another show. But with it, with any— with any war, obviously trillions of dollars, lives are going to be lost, unfortunately, casualties. And I agree with the gentleman. Yeah, a war against Iran with the United States is not going to be easy. This is not Venezuela. He has a point. It's true. You can't control a whole country from the air and from the Navy. And if there is regime change and there is Iranian forces that are opposed to the government, that are willing to go in and take over the seat of government in Tehran, that's what has to happen there. Or, or U.S. forces. And there's been some debate of which force that's going to be doing that, unless in fact there is some kind of an entity that is so friendly to the United States that now we see President Trump saying this is an accepted regime. It's changed. It's not nothing like what it was, just like with the Taliban. The Taliban is not the Taliban from 2001, and that's why they felt like no reason to stay there anymore.

Hmm. Okay.

I think we could actually have another show on that all alone. Yeah. Okay. But let me come back to Afshin because I'd like to ask about what's obviously happening now within the leadership of Iran and whether you think the IRGC potentially supplanting the more theocratic leaders means, could mean even less political dissent, as in not even reformers versus hardliners anymore? And also, how unified is the IRGC as a unit? Are they ready to completely take over as a monolith of sorts, or are there internal fractures in there as well?

There are a number of questions here, and each of these questions are extremely important. But let me kind of I'll begin with the final one. Yes, without any doubt, IRGC is not homogeneous. It is— I mean, I'm not sure how divided it is, but certainly I can argue that it is extremely factional. There are the kind of competitions within the body of IRGC, and there isn't any way that we can claim that, you know, the entity is completely homogeneous. It is a multidimensional, multifaceted entity. It has an economic role, propaganda role, military role, security role. So obviously it is extremely difficult to reduce it to one specific thing. And the other thing that very briefly I just want to mention that Ali mentioned Afghanistan, but to be very honest, I was so surprised that basically this example was used because, you know, Afghanistan literally is so fundamentally different to what's happening right now in Iran. The reason that the United States, despite the fact that they spent trillions of dollars, they could not succeed, is simply because of the fact that a large segment of the population within Afghanistan, the Pashtun kind of tribes and population, were more or less behind, behind the Taliban. And the Taliban used basically this grassroots network to, to challenge the American, the American dominance. But the situation in Iran is fundamentally different. And very often, particularly particularly over the last kind of 3 or 4 weeks, when we're talking about kind of what's happening in the region and what's happening in the country, we completely forget probably the most important variable, the elephant in the room, and that is the Iranian population inside Iran. Don't forget, about only about 3 months ago, the regime felt so intimidated that, you know, they had to effectively massacre 30,000 people because they felt that they They're facing an existential crisis. And the other thing, very briefly, that I need to mention— the problem is that, you know, we create certain assumptions for ourselves. And this assumption is that, okay, Donald Trump is going to target Ali Khamenei, and in the course of 24 hours, the entirety of the regime should collapse. If it doesn't collapse, that means basically everything has gone wrong. This is completely a false and problematic Assumption. Anybody who has any understanding of the complexities of Iranian military security knows that, you know, this is, this is, this is, this wasn't going to be the case. And I don't think the situation is as bad as what a lot of people think for Donald Trump and, and Israel right now, because, you know, effectively Islamic Republic is losing every day.

Ali, quick 30 seconds if you can, just to respond to where you were addressed.

Look, I think we have to see what the U.S. objective has been in Afghanistan. The U.S. objective was to remove the Taliban from power and replace it with a democratic system. That objective was not met. In Iran, the objective, as the president said when he announced the attack, was for Iranian people to be able to come back to the streets and take over their own institutions. That is not going to happen unless the repressive capacity of this regime is destroyed And that is not something that can happen just by using air power.

Okay, Ali Vaez, that will unfortunately have to be the final word for this segment of the Newsmakers. I'd really like to thank all three of my panelists so much for being with us on the Newsmakers. Well, let's get more perspective now from inside Iran. And joining me from the capital is research fellow at the University of Tehran, Mohammad Eslami. Mohammad, thank you so much for being with us. I'd just like to get first your take on the exchange you heard and the comments and analyses of the three panelists that I just spoke to.

First of all, thank you so much for having me. It was interesting that all of them were talking about that Donald Trump doesn't have the success that they assumed to be, have after the attack. Come on, this is the strongest military in the history of humankind. They are targeting a government. They are targeting a country that is under 4 decades of sanctions. The most important and the most powerful regime of sanctions against Iran was on the Iranian economy, on the Iranian military system, on the Iranian society. And now after 1 month of a military campaign between— in collaboration between United States and Israel. Israel claims that it is the strongest military in the region.

So, nothing happened. I understand how Iran has defended itself in this case. That I understand. But I was talking about the theme of this program being about what comes next as far as the government is concerned, or actually what is happening now. And the possibility that the IRGC is now actually in control, which will lead Iran into a military rule of sorts rather than the theocratic one. That we've had, and the fact that many people see the president as well as the Supreme Leader as being supplanted by the military and the Basij?

So, you know, when it comes to the war situation, it is not only about Iran. Every country which is under an illegal war, all the system will be kind of military and security oriented. So, when it comes to Iran, I can tell you that the ministers are working, the president is working. Last night he was in the street and he was talking with the people. And all the ministers, for example, Ministry of Job, Ministry of Economy, Ministry of Foreign Policy, Foreign Affairs, all of them are working. And it is not, if the IRGC wanted to, for example, put somebody, some person as the supreme leader, they didn't have to take time for about 10 days. So the most important thing about the Iranian government is the fact that it is rooted in the society. And all the propagandists claims by the United States, the Israelis, and all persons about this was wrong. And we can see that it was wrong. So let me tell you something more. It is about antifragile characteristics of the Iranian society. Those persons who were in the streets protesting against the government, many of them are now supporting the government. Many of them are now supporting the military, no matter it is IRGC or it is the army. We are supporting those persons who are defending.

Okay. And you don't fear the elements of what many would just label Iran's deep state? You don't fear those elements actually just taking total control behind the scenes after this conflict finishes?

I don't know what, what do you mean by the deep states of the Iranian government? We do have We do have elections. We do have IRGC. We do have military. We do have security body. All of them are working together. Yes, there are some dynamics of, in terms of political dynamics in Iran. They are thinking about new persons. They are thinking about new elections. They are thinking about negotiations. Right now, there are lots of ideas in Iran regarding the future of the nuclear issue, future of the Strait of Hormuz, future of, for example, missiles. The institutions are working together and they are thinking about the security of the region. You know that right now the American-built security architecture of the Persian Gulf has gone. There's no security. The old has died and the new is coming. So these are the questions that Iranians are thinking about.

Mohammad Aslami, very unfortunate. We're going to have to finish it there. I'd really like to thank you for sharing your insight on the newsmakers. And I'd like to thank our viewers for joining us as well. Remember, you can follow us on social media. Do be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel. I'm Andrea Sankey. We'll see you next time.