In the aftermath of the Feb. 28 assassination of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, attention has turned to Ali Larijani as the country’s de facto wartime leader. His position as secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council (SNSC), roughly analogous to the U.S. national security advisor, places him at the center of Tehran’s strategic decision-making amid the all-out assault on Iran.
Many observers now portray Larijani as a pragmatic interlocutor with whom U.S. President Donald Trump might strike a deal, much as he did with Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodríguez. But assessing that likelihood requires a deeper understanding of who exactly Larijani is—and, more importantly, the institutions of the Islamic Republic in which he has been immersed for his entire adult life and now ostensibly leads.
Born in 1957 in the holy Shiite city of Najaf, Iraq, into an Iranian clerical family, Larijani grew up in an environment shaped by religion. His father, Mirza Hashem Amoli, was a respected scholar who moved the family to the seminary town of Qom in 1961 amid rising Arab nationalism and hostility toward Iranians in Iraq. Unlike many sons of clerics, Larijani did not pursue theology. Instead, he studied computer science at Aryamehr University of Technology, later named Sharif University, a prestigious institution founded by the Pahlavi regime to train technocratic elites. During the politically turbulent 1970s, he remained largely apolitical, avoiding the era’s dominant ideological movements such as Marxism and Islamism.
His entry into politics came through marriage. In 1977, he married Farideh Motahari, daughter of Morteza Motahari, a prominent cleric and close associate of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. After the 1979 revolution, Motahari—then the chairman of the Council of the Revolution, which was tasked with establishing an Islamic republic—helped secure positions for Larijani and his brother Mohammad Javad at the state broadcaster, Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB). Although Motahari was assassinated later that year, Larijani’s bureaucratic career had begun.
In 1982, two years after Iraq invaded Iran, Larijani joined the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Though he later admitted he was “not a guardsman by temperament,” he rose through the organization and eventually became a brigadier general and the deputy chief of its joint staff.
His connections with powerful political figures, particularly former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, proved decisive. Rafsanjani appointed him as minister of culture and Islamic guidance in 1992. There, Larijani demonstrated pragmatic instincts, legalizing videocassette recorders and foreign films rather than continuing ineffective bans.
His administrative abilities soon attracted Khamenei’s attention. In 1994, Khamenei appointed him as the director of IRIB and the leader’s representative to the Supreme National Security Council. Although Larijani initially belonged to Rafsanjani’s technocratic circle, he opportunistically shifted his allegiance to Khamenei.
Then-Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (right) and Ali Larijani, serving as Iran’s top nuclear negotiator, arrive for a meeting with Russian security chief Igor Ivanov in Tehran on Jan. 28, 2007.Behrouz Mehri/AFP via Getty Images
During President Mohammad Khatami’s reformist administration, IRIB under Larijani became a powerful conservative platform, broadcasting televised confessions of political prisoners and promoting, with Khamenei’s blessing, narratives portraying reformists as threats to the Islamic Republic. At the SNSC, Larijani derided Khatami and then-Secretary Hassan Rouhani for seeking nuclear compromise with the West, dismissing their diplomacy as “trading pearls for bonbons.”
In 2005, Khamenei appointed Larijani as the secretary of the Supreme National Security Council and Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator. His strategy combined ideological firmness with tactical pragmatism: advancing Iran’s nuclear program while maintaining diplomatic engagement with European mediators such as Javier Solana. Tensions with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose incendiary rhetoric against Israel helped the latter mobilize the world opinion against Iran, eventually led Larijani to resign from his post on the SNSC in 2007.
The setback proved temporary. In 2008, Larijani was elected speaker of parliament, a position that he held until 2020. At the same time, his younger brother Sadegh served as chief justice from 2009 to 2020, the first time that two brothers simultaneously headed two branches of government in the Islamic Republic. As speaker, Larijani cultivated a reputation as a pragmatic conservative mediator during crises, including the suppression of the 2009 Green Movement protests—the leaders of which were prosecuted in show trials by Sadegh—and disputes over Iran’s nuclear program.
Iranian Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani (left) and his brother, Chief Justice Hojatoleslam Sadegh Ardeshir Larijani, sit during a ceremony in Parliament in Tehran on Dec. 1, 2009.Atta Kenare/AFP via Getty Images
By the late 2010s, the family’s influence declined. In 2019, Khamenei removed Sadegh from the judiciary, and Larijani was barred from running in the 2021 and 2024 presidential elections, as the supreme leader favored other conservative candidates—namely, Ebrahim Raisi and Saeed Jalili.
Iran’s mounting crises in the mid-2020s unexpectedly revived Larijani’s fortunes. Domestically, the regime faced waves of increasingly violent protests, most notably the 2022-2023 uprising triggered by the violent enforcement of the hijab law and the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in police custody. Externally, Iran suffered major strategic setbacks: Israeli attacks on Hezbollah in September 2024, the collapse of the Assad regime in Syria in December of the same year, Israeli strikes on Iranian territory in June 2025, and subsequent U.S. bombardment of Iranian nuclear facilities.
Together, these shocks created demand within Iran’s leadership for experienced crisis managers, paving the way for Larijani’s return to the Supreme National Security Council. Larijani’s appointment as secretary of the SNSC in 2025 restored him to the center of Iran’s strategic decision-making apparatus. Yet the structure of the Islamic Republic limits the authority of any single official. Any agreement with the United States will require the consent of a broad constellation of political and military actors.
Even before Khamenei’s assassination, Iran had begun drifting toward collective leadership. By 2024, the aging supreme leader had become increasingly isolated, and his seclusion deepened after the June 2025 war revealed him as a prime target for Israeli assassination. In practice, governance shifted to an informal leadership council composed of President Masoud Pezeshkian, Parliamentary Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Chief Justice Gholam-Hossein Mohseni Ejei, and representatives from both the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the regular army. This body chose not to enforce the Hijab and Chastity Law passed after the hijab protests, fearing renewed unrest. In Khamenei’s absence, it also accepted the cease-fire that ended the June 2025 war. Following Khamenei’s assassination on Feb. 28, the council has continued to govern Iran and is also likely to do so after a new leader has been elected.
This file image supplied by the Iranian Supreme Leader’s office shows (from left) Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, Iranian Speaker of the Parliament Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, and Iranian Chief Justice Gholam Hossein Mohseni Ejei in Tehran on March 8, 2025.ZUMA Press Wire via Reuters
As SNSC secretary, Larijani functions primarily as a coordinator—collecting proposals from across the security bureaucracy, presenting options to the leadership council, and implementing the decisions that emerge. Ironically, Israel’s strikes simplified his institutional environment. Khamenei, whose ideological rigidity at times constrained diplomacy, is gone. So too is Adm. Ali Shamkhani—a former SNSC secretary who, after the June 2025 war, headed the newly revived Supreme Defense Council, widely seen as an institution designed to limit Larijani’s influence. With Shamkhani removed, Larijani faces fewer internal rivals.
Yet the central question remains whether he can deliver an agreement that satisfies Washington without undermining the Islamic Republic’s survival strategy. For decades, the Islamic Republic has sought a paradoxical equilibrium with the United States: resisting U.S. pressure rhetorically while quietly exploring arrangements that allow the regime to survive economically and politically. Iran’s negotiating posture under Larijani may introduce novelties such as direct talks between Iranian and U.S. government representatives, but it is unlikely to represent a fundamental break with the past.
From the collective leadership’s perspective, a Venezuela model may not be unattractive. Washington has shown willingness to strike limited transactional deals with Caracas, permitting partial sanctions relief and oil exports in exchange for modest concessions. Iranian policymakers have watched closely. What they seek is not normalization with the United States but a similar arrangement, one that preserves the Islamic Republic while allowing Iranian oil to gradually return to global markets.
Ali Larijani (center), the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, arrives in Beirut, Lebanon, for a meeting on Aug. 12, 2025.Houssam Shbaro/Anadolu via Getty Images
But Tehran also believes that negotiations with Trump cannot begin from weakness. Concessions offered without leverage invite pressure rather than compromise. The regime therefore appears to be constructing leverage of a different kind. Having suffered strategic losses of its proxies, Tehran’s remaining instrument of coercion lies in the vulnerability of the global energy system, which explains the regime targeting regional shipping and energy infrastructure.
The implicit message to Washington is stark: Should the United States pursue the Israeli policy of regime change, there will be catastrophic consequences for global energy markets. In that sense, Iran’s strategy resembles strategic hostage-taking. The pipelines, refineries, terminals, and shipping lanes that sustain the global economy become the silent backdrop to diplomacy. Tehran may have little desire to ignite such a conflagration, as it would endanger the regime itself, but by demonstrating that it retains the capacity to do so, it seeks to shape Washington’s calculations.
Larijani’s role is therefore less that of a peacemaker than of a manager of calibrated escalation. Whether a deal emerges will depend not only on him but also on the collective leadership now guiding Iran—and on the choices made in Washington.
