Iran: Islamic Republic under the Leader's guardianship (1989–present)

Background

When Khomeini died in June 1989, the Assembly of Experts chose Ali Khamenei as Leader. A constitutional revision, approved by referendum the same summer, abolished the post of prime minister, strengthened the presidency within the elected branch, dropped the requirement that the Leader be a senior source of religious emulation and made the Expediency Council a permanent body. Saïd Amir Arjomand describes the following decades as the transformation of a revolutionary charismatic regime into a clerical-military state in which the Leader's office and the Revolutionary Guards gained power at the expense of the clergy at large and of elected officials.

How it is governed

• The Leader. The Leader has no fixed term. He commands the armed forces, appoints the head of the judiciary, the heads of state broadcasting, half of the Guardian Council and the Expediency Council, and sets general policy. In practice his office supervises a large network of foundations and security bodies.
• The Guardian Council and vetting. Since the early 1990s the Council has interpreted its constitutional "supervision" of elections as a right to approve or reject every candidate for president, parliament and the Assembly of Experts. It routinely excludes reformists and others not deemed loyal; no woman has been allowed to run for president. In 2024 it barred former president Hassan Rouhani from the Assembly of Experts election.
• Elected bodies. Presidents have come from different factions: Rafsanjani (1989–1997), the reformist Mohammad Khatami (1997–2005), Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (2005–2013), Hassan Rouhani (2013–2021), Ebrahim Raisi (2021–2024) and Masoud Pezeshkian (from 2024). These alternations show real competition among approved factions, but the unelected institutions form a permanent barrier to opposition victory.
• The Revolutionary Guards. The IRGC runs military, intelligence and regional proxy operations and owns large construction and energy businesses.

Economy and welfare

Oil and gas rents (World Bank estimates of total resource rents were 33 percent of GDP in 2000 and 30 percent in 2021) fund the budget, subsidies and the foundations. International sanctions over the nuclear programme, tightened in 2012 and again after the United States left the 2015 nuclear agreement in 2018, have cut exports and fuelled inflation. Kevan Harris argues that the Islamic Republic nevertheless built an extensive welfare state that expanded health care, education and social insurance and created a large new middle class; life expectancy at birth rose from 64 years in 1990 to 78 in 2024 according to UN estimates, and women's literacy and university enrolment rose sharply.

Repression of protest

• 1999. Security forces and vigilantes attacked student protests in Tehran.
• 2009. After the official result gave Ahmadinejad about 63 percent, millions protested in the "Green Movement". Analysts at Chatham House found anomalies including turnout above 100 percent in two provinces. Protesters were killed and thousands arrested; the candidates Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi were held under house arrest without charge from 2011.
• 2022. Jina Mahsa Amini died in the custody of the morality police in September 2022. The "Woman, Life, Freedom" protests that followed were met with lethal force. The UN fact-finding mission found her death unlawful, considered 551 killings a credible figure as of September 2023 and concluded that many violations amounted to crimes against humanity; nine young men were executed in connection with the protests.
• 2025–2026. Executions surged in 2025, with Amnesty International reporting more than 1,000 by September. Protests over inflation and the collapse of the currency began on 28 December 2025; the authorities cut the internet on 8 January 2026. The rights group HRANA confirmed more than 3,300 deaths and more than 24,000 arrests by mid-January, and an Iranian official cited by Reuters gave at least 5,000 dead.

War and succession, 2025–2026

Israel fought a 12-day war with Iran in June 2025, ending with US strikes on nuclear facilities. On 28 February 2026 US and Israeli strikes killed Ali Khamenei. As the constitution provides, an interim council of the president, the head of the judiciary and a Guardian Council jurist took over, and on 8 March 2026 the Assembly of Experts named his son Mojtaba Khamenei as Leader, a choice that reports linked to the backing of the Revolutionary Guards. A two-week ceasefire was agreed on 8 April 2026. As of October 2026 the longer-term outcome of the war and the succession was unsettled.

Debates

• Theocracy or security state? Arjomand and others argue that the Guards and the Leader's office, not the clergy as a whole, now hold power.
• Do elections matter? Turnout fell to 41 percent in the 2024 parliamentary election, the lowest in the Republic's history; whether elections still legitimise the system or now mainly reveal its narrowing base is debated.
• Welfare and legitimacy. Harris's account of social provision sits uneasily with repeated mass protest; both are part of the record.

Lessons for institution design

• Vetting bodies decide elections before voting. A council that approves candidates controls the menu voters choose from.
• Unaccountable guardians accumulate power. An office without term limits and with appointment powers over courts and media grew stronger with each succession crisis.

Further reading

• Saïd Amir Arjomand, After Khomeini (OUP, 2009)
• UN fact-finding mission on Iran, report A/HRC/55/67 (2024)
• Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2026: Iran