Officials say a candidate has been chosen based on the late supreme leader’s advice that his replacement should “be hated by the enemy.”
Posted on March 8, 2026
The clerical body that will elect Iran’s next supreme leader, following the assassination of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has reached a majority consensus, according to Ayatollah Mohammad-Mahdi Mirbagheri, a member of the Assembly of Experts.
Iran’s Mehr news agency quoted him on Sunday as saying that “some obstacles” regarding the process still need to be resolved.
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According to the Iranian constitution, it is the 88-member Assembly of Experts that is authorized to elect the country’s supreme leader.
Khamenei, who ruled Iran for 37 years, was killed in a US-Israeli attack on Tehran on February 28, at the start of the war that has now engulfed much of the Middle East.
Meanwhile, the Israeli military warned that it would pursue anyone in the Assembly of Experts who sought to name a successor to Khamenei.
“We warn all those who want to participate in the successor selection meeting that we will not hesitate to attack you. This is a warning!” the Israeli military said in Persian in a post on X on Sunday.
In a video posted by the Fars news agency on Telegram, Mirbagheri said that “great efforts have been made to determine the leadership” and that “a decisive and unanimous opinion” has been reached.
In another interview with Fars, another member of the body, Hojjatoleslam Jafari, said he hopes that “all the Iranian people will be satisfied as soon as possible.”
“The delay in the election of the third leader is bitter and unwanted for everyone, and there is no alternative, so we should not have bad thoughts about our representatives at this difficult time,” he said.
According to Iranian media reports, the group of academics had a slight disagreement over whether their final decision should follow an in-person meeting or instead be issued without complying with this formality.
Ayatollah Mohsen Heidari Alekasir, another member of the Assembly of Experts, said in a video published by Nournews on Sunday that an in-person meeting of the assembly for a final vote was not possible under current conditions.
He said a candidate had been chosen based on Khamenei’s advice that Iran’s top leader should “be hated by the enemy” rather than praised.
“Even the Great Satan [the US] has mentioned his name,” Heidari Alekasir said of his chosen successor, days after US President Donald Trump said the son of the late supreme leader, Mojtaba Hosseini Khamenei, was an “unacceptable” choice for him.
