Iranian Government: Structure, Officials & How It Works

An encyclopedic guide to the institutions of the Islamic Republic — its Supreme Leader, elected presidency, clerical councils, and the unprecedented 2026 succession crisis following the death of Ali Khamenei.

The Islamic Republic of Iran is one of the most unusual political systems in the modern world: a republic in which a clerical Supreme Leader has the constitutional last word on virtually every consequential question, while elected presidents, parliaments, and councils operate around him. Understanding Iran requires holding both halves of that picture in mind at once. This page explains how the system is structured, who currently holds its key offices, how power actually flows in practice, and what changed when Ali Khamenei was killed in February 2026.

A theocratic republic, by design

The Islamic Republic was founded in 1979 after a popular revolution overthrew the Pahlavi monarchy. Its first Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, fused two ideas that had not previously been combined at this scale: a Shi'a clerical doctrine called velayat-e faqih ("guardianship of the jurist"), which holds that a senior religious scholar should rule until the return of the Twelfth Imam, and the institutional furniture of a modern republic — a written constitution, an elected president, an elected parliament, courts, and ministries.

The result is a dual structure. On one side sit the elected institutions: the President, the 290-seat Islamic Consultative Assembly (Majles), the 88-member Assembly of Experts, and local councils. On the other side sit the appointed clerical institutions: the Supreme Leader, the Guardian Council, the Expediency Council, and the head of the Judiciary. The two sides are bound together by overlapping appointments and vetting powers, and in nearly every dispute between them the clerical side prevails.

Iran's political scientists, both inside and outside the country, often describe the system as a layered hierarchy. At the bottom is the electorate, which chooses among pre-vetted candidates. Above the electorate sit the elected bodies, whose decisions can be reviewed and overturned by appointed bodies. Above the appointed bodies sits the Supreme Leader, who appoints many of their members. And around the entire civilian structure sits a parallel security architecture — chief among them the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps — that answers directly to the Supreme Leader rather than to the elected government.

The Supreme Leader

The Supreme Leader (in Persian, Rahbar) is the head of state, the commander-in-chief of all armed forces, and the ultimate arbiter of foreign policy, the nuclear program, and the broad direction of domestic policy. He appoints the head of the Judiciary, the heads of state media, the commanders of the IRGC and the regular army, the imams who lead Friday prayers in major cities, and half the members of the Guardian Council. He can dismiss a sitting president, and his rulings on matters of religious law are binding on all state institutions.

The Supreme Leader is chosen by the Assembly of Experts, an 88-member body of senior clerics elected by the public — but only from candidates the Guardian Council has first approved. In theory the Assembly can also remove a Supreme Leader who is no longer fit to serve. In practice, no Supreme Leader has ever been removed, and the office has been held by only two men in the Republic's history: Ayatollah Khomeini from 1979 until his death in 1989, and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei from 1989 until his death in February 2026.

On 9 March 2026, the Assembly of Experts named Mojtaba Khamenei — the second son of the late leader and a hardline cleric long thought to wield significant behind-the-scenes power — as Iran's third Supreme Leader. The choice was controversial inside the regime: it broke with decades of regime rhetoric about the impropriety of dynastic succession in a republic, and it was made under wartime conditions that limited deliberation. As of late April 2026, Mojtaba Khamenei has not appeared publicly, and statements attributed to him have been distributed in writing or through video segments that outside analysts believe to be AI-generated. Western and regional reporting describes day-to-day decisions as flowing from a consensus among security elites — IRGC commanders, intelligence chiefs, and the heads of the elected and clerical institutions — rather than from a single supreme authority.

"He is one voice within a broader consensus-building process among security elites." — Western analysts on Mojtaba Khamenei's role since March 2026

The President and the executive branch

The President of Iran is the head of government, elected by direct popular vote for a four-year term and limited to two consecutive terms. He chairs the cabinet, proposes the national budget to Parliament, signs treaties (subject to parliamentary approval), and represents the country abroad. He is the second-highest official in the state — but he answers to the Supreme Leader on every question of strategic importance, and his ministers of defense, intelligence, foreign affairs, and interior are effectively subject to the Supreme Leader's veto.

The current President is Masoud Pezeshkian, a heart surgeon and longtime parliamentarian from Tabriz who was elected in July 2024 after the death of Ebrahim Raisi in a helicopter crash. Pezeshkian ran as a reformist promising engagement with the West, restoration of the 2015 nuclear deal, and a softening of social restrictions, particularly on the enforcement of the hijab. Since the war with the United States and Israel began in early 2026, his domestic political space has narrowed sharply, but he remains the regime's principal interlocutor with foreign governments and a member of the interim collective leadership that briefly governed after Ali Khamenei's death.

The cabinet

The cabinet is nominated by the President and confirmed individually by Parliament. As of April 2026 it includes Abbas Araghchi (Foreign Affairs), Eskandar Momeni (Interior), Esmaeil Khatib (Intelligence), Mohsen Paknejad (Petroleum), Amin Hossein Rahimi (Justice), Mohammad-Reza Zafarghandi (Health), Farzaneh Sadegh (Roads and Urban Development), and other portfolio holders covering economic, cultural, and social affairs. The Minister of Defense and the heads of the intelligence services are, by long-standing convention, candidates acceptable to both the President and the Supreme Leader.

The Islamic Consultative Assembly (Majles)

Iran's parliament — the Majles-e Showra-ye Eslami, or Islamic Consultative Assembly — has 290 seats, of which five are reserved for recognized religious minorities (Armenian Christians, Assyrian and Chaldean Christians, Jews, and Zoroastrians). Members serve four-year terms and are elected from multi-member districts.

Parliament writes and passes legislation, ratifies treaties, approves the budget, and confirms cabinet ministers. It has the constitutional power to impeach ministers and the President. In practice, however, every bill it passes must be reviewed by the Guardian Council, which can — and frequently does — reject legislation as un-Islamic or unconstitutional. When the two bodies deadlock, the dispute is resolved by the Expediency Council, a body whose members are appointed by the Supreme Leader.

The current Speaker is Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, a former mayor of Tehran and former IRGC air-force commander, first elected speaker in 2020 and re-elected in subsequent parliaments. The current 12th Majles, elected in 2024, is dominated by hardline factions following one of the lowest-turnout parliamentary elections in the Republic's history.

The Guardian Council

The Guardian Council (Showra-ye Negahban) is a 12-member body that functions as a constitutional court, an upper legislative chamber, and an electoral commission rolled into one. Six of its members are clerics chosen directly by the Supreme Leader; the other six are jurists nominated by the Chief Justice and approved by Parliament.

The Guardian Council has three powers that, in combination, make it arguably the most consequential body in Iranian politics. First, it reviews every law passed by Parliament, and can void any provision it judges incompatible with Islam or the constitution. Second, it supervises all national elections, certifying results. Third — and most controversially — it vets every candidate for the Presidency, Parliament, and the Assembly of Experts, and disqualifies the great majority before voters ever see them on the ballot. In recent election cycles, the Council has rejected former presidents, sitting members of Parliament, and women who sought to run for the Presidency.

The Assembly of Experts

The Assembly of Experts (Majles-e Khobregan) is an 88-member body of senior Shi'a clerics, elected by direct popular vote for eight-year terms from a list of candidates approved by the Guardian Council. Its constitutional responsibilities are narrow but momentous: it elects the Supreme Leader, supervises his performance, and has the power — never yet exercised — to remove him if he becomes incapable of fulfilling his duties. After Ali Khamenei's death in February 2026, the Assembly held the closely watched session that resulted in Mojtaba Khamenei's elevation in March.

The Expediency Discernment Council

Created in 1988, the Expediency Discernment Council was designed to resolve disputes between Parliament and the Guardian Council. Its members — currently around 40 — are appointed by the Supreme Leader for five-year terms and include the heads of the three branches, senior clerics, and figures from the security and economic establishments. Beyond dispute resolution, the Council also advises the Supreme Leader on the broad outlines of national policy.

The Judiciary

The head of Iran's judiciary is appointed directly by the Supreme Leader for a five-year term. He in turn appoints the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and the Prosecutor General. The current head is Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Eje'i, an ultra-conservative cleric who took office in 2021 and is widely considered one of the most powerful figures in the regime; he sat on the Interim Leadership Council that governed for nine days between Ali Khamenei's death and Mojtaba Khamenei's elevation.

Iranian courts apply a hybrid of civil-code procedure and Sharia law, with separate court systems for general criminal and civil cases, family matters, military offenses, and clerical discipline. The Revolutionary Courts handle cases the regime defines as threats to national security, including most prosecutions of journalists, activists, and protesters. Iran is one of the highest per-capita users of the death penalty in the world, with hundreds of executions reported in most recent years, the majority for drug offenses.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (Sepah-e Pasdaran-e Enqelab-e Eslami, usually shortened to IRGC or Sepah) is a parallel armed service founded in 1979 to protect the Revolution from internal and external enemies. It is constitutionally distinct from Iran's regular military, the Artesh, and reports directly to the Supreme Leader.

Over four decades, the IRGC has expanded into the most consequential institution in Iran outside the Supreme Leader's office. It controls the country's strategic missile program, manages the most sensitive elements of the nuclear program, and runs a vast economic empire — construction conglomerates, telecommunications companies, oil and gas service firms, and import-export operations — that some estimates put at 20 to 40 percent of Iranian GDP. Its naval branch is responsible for operations in the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz. Its expeditionary arm, the Quds Force, runs Iran's relationships with allied paramilitary groups across the region, from Hezbollah in Lebanon to the Houthis in Yemen and various Iraqi and Syrian militias. It also commands the Basij, a domestic volunteer paramilitary mobilized for crowd control during periods of unrest.

Elections in Iran

Iranians vote in four kinds of national or quasi-national elections: presidential elections every four years, parliamentary elections every four years, Assembly of Experts elections every eight years, and local council elections on a rolling basis. Voting is direct and the franchise is universal for citizens 18 and older. There is no pre-registration; voters present identity documents at polling stations on election day.

What makes Iranian elections distinct from those in liberal democracies is candidate vetting. The Guardian Council reviews every prospective candidate for ideological loyalty to the system, religious credentials, and political reliability, and disqualifies the substantial majority. In the 2021 presidential election, for example, the Council disqualified all major reformist candidates and several prominent conservatives, leaving voters with a slate so narrow that turnout fell to its lowest level since 1979. The result is sometimes described as a system of "managed competition": real contests within boundaries set by unelected gatekeepers.

The 2026 succession crisis

Iran is in the most consequential political moment of its post-revolutionary history. On 28 February 2026, Ali Khamenei — Supreme Leader for thirty-six years — was killed in a strike attributed to U.S. and Israeli forces during the war that had begun earlier that year. Members of his immediate family, including his wife and one of his daughters, were also reported killed.

Within hours, Iran's constitutional emergency provisions activated an Interim Leadership Council consisting of President Pezeshkian, Chief Justice Mohseni-Eje'i, and Guardian Council member Alireza Arafi, joined briefly by Speaker Ghalibaf. The Council held the country together for nine days while the Assembly of Experts deliberated. On 9 March 2026, the Assembly named Mojtaba Khamenei the new Supreme Leader.

The succession was unprecedented in three respects. It was the first under wartime conditions; the first to install the son of a previous Supreme Leader, raising questions about dynastic legitimacy in a republic; and the first in which the new leader has, weeks into his tenure, not been seen in public. Analysts have offered several explanations — security concerns, reports of injury during the same strike that killed his father, deliberate concealment to project mystery, internal disagreement over his actual elevation — and the regime has not credibly resolved any of them. What is observable is that decision-making appears to have shifted toward a security-elite consensus, with the IRGC, the Supreme National Security Council, and the heads of the elected institutions all visibly more autonomous than they were under Ali Khamenei.

For readers trying to understand current Iranian foreign policy — including ceasefire negotiations, the status of nuclear facilities damaged in the strikes, and Iran's evolving relationships with Russia, China, and its regional partners — it is essential to recognize that the country is no longer a personalist autocracy with a single decisive voice at the top. It is, for the moment, something closer to a wartime junta operating behind a clerical facade.

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