Ayatollah Alireza Arafi is new Supreme Leader of Iran: Rare facts, key details about interim successor to Ali Khamenei

Iran on Sunday named Ayatollah Alireza Arafi as an interim successor to long-time Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Ayatollah Alireza Arafi has been named to an interim leadership council, that includes the president and head of the judiciary, to be at the helm of the country until a new permanent leader is selected. It came after the United States and Israel claimed to have killed Khamenei in a wave of strikes Saturday against targets in Iran, which sparked swift retaliation by the Islamic republic. Iran's clerical leaders vowed to avenge the death of its supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and launched a fresh wave of attacks on Sunday as Israel hit back at the capital Tehran.

Who is Ayatollah Alireza Arafi?

Alireza Arafi was appointed on Sunday as the jurist member of Iran's Leadership Council, a body tasked with fulfilling the supreme leader's role until the Assembly of Experts elects a new leader, ISNA news agency reported.


A cleric member of the Guardian Council, Arafi will be part of the temporary Leadership Council alongside President Masoud Pezeshkian and Chief Justice Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei.

Shia cleric and Islamic jurist Ayatollah Arafi was born in 1959 in Meybod in central Iran.

Head of Iran’s Centre for the Management of Islamic Seminaries, and Director of the revered Qom Seminary since 2016, he is also a member of the powerful Guardian Council, a constitutional body that vets legislation and oversees elections.

He has served as President of Al-Mustafa International University from 2008 to 2018 and is a permanent member of the Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution since 2011.

Who will Lead Iran?

Ayatollah Khamenei, whose death in an attack on his residential compound in Tehran was announced by Iran, had been the Supreme Leader since 1989 after the passing away of the 1979 Iranian Islamic Revolution's leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, in 1989.

After announcing his death, the government said that a three-member council comprising President Masoud Pezeshkian, Judiciary Chief Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei, and a jurist from the Guardian Council would oversee Iran’s leadership during the transitional period, as per the IRNA news agency.

Under Iran’s constitution, the council assumes leadership duties until a successor is appointed by the Assembly of Experts, an 88-member clerical body that holds ultimate authority over the country’s political system, armed forces, and key institutions.