ATHENS, Greece (AP) \u2014 One after another, Israel has taken out Iran\u2019s top leaders.<\/p>\n
First it was Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei<\/a>, killed in the opening shots of the war<\/a>. Now Ali Larijani,<\/a> the secretary of Iran\u2019s Supreme National Security Council who was considered one of the most powerful figures in the country, has also been killed. As have a raft of other top-ranking<\/a> military and political leaders.<\/p>\n With so many top leadership figures taken out, who is now running Iran? Here is a look at the country\u2019s power structure, what is known \u2014 and what is not.<\/p>\n Khamenei\u2019s successor<\/p>\n Ultimate authority in Iran rests with the country\u2019s supreme leader, who has sat at the apex of power since the creation of the Islamic Republic in 1979 after the revolution that overthrew the shah.<\/p>\n After Khamenei was killed, his son, 56-year-old Mojtaba Khamenei,<\/a> was quickly named to replace him as Iran\u2019s new supreme leader. A secretive figure, the younger Khamenei has not been seen in public since the airstrike killed his 86-year-old father.<\/p>\n The cleric had long been considered a contender for the post, despite never having been elected or appointed to a government position. The younger Khamenei maintains close ties to the country\u2019s powerful paramilitary Revolutionary Guard.<\/p>\n His views are believed to be even more hard-line than those of his father. Officially, he is now in charge of Iran\u2019s armed forces, and any decision regarding the country\u2019s nuclear program rests with him.<\/p>\n But is he truly running Iran?<\/p>\n Israel says Iran\u2019s leadership is in disarray<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m not sure who\u2019s running Iran right now,\u201d Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu<\/a> said during a news conference Thursday night. \u201cMojtaba, the replacement ayatollah, has not shown his face. Have you seen him? We haven\u2019t, and we can\u2019t vouch for what exactly is happening there.\u201d<\/p>\n Mojtaba Khamenei\u2019s wife, Zahra Haddad Adel, was also killed in the Israeli strike that killed his father. U.S. and Israeli officials have suggested he was wounded in the same attack.<\/p>\n \u201cIran\u2019s command and control structure is in utter chaos,\u201d Netanyahu said.<\/p>\n Burcu Ozcelik, senior research fellow for Middle East security at the Royal United Services Institute, a United Kingdom-based defense and security think tank, said the elimination of so many of Iran\u2019s top leaders will alter its theocracy \u2014 but that the change could be a gradual one.<\/p>\n \u201cLeadership matters, and the loss of key decision-makers spanning politics, intelligence, internal security and (the) army will have transformative consequences,\u201d Ozcelik said. <\/p>\n \u201cThe fixation on the terminology of \u2018regime collapse\u2019 is obscuring the fact that the regime is already changing\u201d due to the strikes against the country and the killing of high-level leaders. But the full impact of the war on the country could take time to emerge, Ozcelik explained.<\/p>\n \u201cWe need to be prepared for change that may take years, not weeks or months.\u201d<\/p>\n The Revolutionary Guard<\/p>\n For many analysts, true power now rests with Iran\u2019s feared paramilitary Islamic Revolutionary Guard<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Revolutionary Guard is the state now,\u201d said Ali Vaez, Iran project director at the International Crisis Group. Before the war, the country\u2019s civilian leadership was \u201csubservient entirely\u201d to the supreme leader, he explained, while the Guard was the second-most powerful force in the country.<\/p>\n But now, with the elder Khamenei gone and his son not enjoying the same authority as his father, \u201cit is really the Revolutionary Guards who are running the country.\u201d<\/p>\n The Guard rose out of Iran\u2019s 1979 Islamic Revolution<\/a> as a force meant to protect the country\u2019s Shiite cleric-overseen government. It later became enshrined in its constitution and operated parallel to Iran\u2019s regular armed forces.<\/p>\n The Guard\u2019s expeditionary Quds Force was key in creating what Iran describes as its \u201cAxis of Resistance\u201d<\/a> against Israel and the United States. It backed Syria\u2019s former President Bashar Assad, the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, Yemen\u2019s Houthi rebels and other armed groups in the region.<\/p>\n An independent military<\/p>\n Early on in the war, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi suggested the country\u2019s military units were acting independently from central government control.<\/p>\n \u201cOur \u2026 military units are now in fact independent and somehow isolated and they are acting based on instructions \u2014 you know, general instructions \u2014 given to them in advance,\u201d Araghchi had said on Al Jazeera on March 1.<\/p>\n Pressed about Tehran\u2019s attacks on other Gulf nations<\/a> \u2014 such as Oman, which had acted as an intermediary<\/a> for Iran in recent nuclear talks with the U.S. \u2014 he said: \u201cWhat happened in Oman was not our choice. We have already told our \u2026 army, armed forces to be careful about the targets that they choose.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cMultiple layers of leadership\u201d<\/p>\n The possibility of an Israeli or a U.S. attack on Iran had long been in the cards. It was something the Islamic Republic had factored into its planning, setting up multiple contingency plans, Vaez said.<\/p>\n \u201cI think the mistake in the U.S. and in Israel is that they ended up believing their own rhetoric that Iran is akin to a terrorist organization, that decapitating the regime or removing one or two layers of political elite would result in paralysis and collapse,\u201d Vaez said. \u201cWhereas this is a state, \u2026 it has multiple layers of leadership.\u201d<\/p>\n Even if all top generals are eliminated, he said, others lower down the ranks can pick up where their superiors left off. \u201cThe expectation that this regime will \u2026 implode by removing a few dozen senior leaders, I think is nothing but an illusion.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ATHENS, Greece (AP) \u2014 One after another, Israel has taken out Iran\u2019s top leaders. 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