03/01/2026March 1, 2026Iran’s revolutionary guard may stand to benefit: Expert tells DW

With Iran’s supreme leader confirmed dead and US President Donald Trump calling upon the Iranian people to take hold of their country’s future, the question emerges: who is next in line for Iran’s leadership?

DW posed the question to Iran expert Mehrzad Boroujerdi, Dean of College of Arts, Sciences, and Education at the Missouri University of Science and Technology. 

Boroujerdi said it was unlikely that the Israel-US air strikes would lead to regime change due to a lack of an opposition or a “government in waiting” which could fill the power vaccum. 

“We do not have too many successful cases of regime change brought about by aerial bombardments. One can think of Libya but even there we had an opposition force which was on the ground and active in a certain part of the country and was able to come and overthrow Muammar Gaddafi’s regime. We don’t neccessarily have that in Iran,” he told DW. 

Instead, Iran’s revolutionary guards might stand to benefit. 

“They are now less in the shadow of the clerics, they are no longer just the bodyguards,” Boroujerdi said.

According to Iran’s law, the Assembly of Experts, a group of over 80 men, are tasked with picking a new supreme leader. 

“The regime will sooner or later declare someone as the next supreme leader,” the expert said. 

However, “It is likely, in this vaccum that has been created, that we see the revolutionary guards invoking the argument of an emergency situation,” Boroujerdi said.