Iran Names Ayatollah Alireza Arafi to Interim Council After Khamenei’s Death
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The Islamic RepublicOpaque and fragmented governance system after assassination of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei Hardline cleric Ayatollah Alireza Arafi was elected to the interim leadership council on Saturday.
“His name has come up in the last two or three years. He is not some kind of politician, but part of exporting the revolution in terms of propaganda,” said Ben Sabati, an Iran expert at the Institute of National Security Studies in Israel. One of the cornerstones of the Islamic Republic’s birth in 1979 was to export its violent Shia ideology and promote radical Islamic revolution around the world.
Jason Brodsky, policy director of United Against Nuclear Iran, told Fox News Digital, “He has been aligning himself with Khomeinist ideology throughout his career. Khomeinism is a threat to American interests.”
A hallmark of Khomeinism, experts say, is the “death to America” pledge of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran, in 1979.
A woman walks past election posters of candidate Ayatollah Alireza Arafi for the upcoming Assembly of Experts election in downtown Tehran, Iran, Wednesday, Feb. 21, 2024. (Wahid Salemi/AP Photo)
According to UANI reports, Arafi has been protesting against America and Israel for several days. “America will take its desire for Iran to abandon the production of military hardware to the grave,” he quotes, and in a 2019 Friday prayer sermon, he declared, “We will be with our imam and leader until the end, when we insult (global) arrogance. With the Sayyid of the Resistance, we say that until the end of Islam, the great leader of Islam, we say: “The proud people of the world are defeated and Israel is destroyed.”
Brodsky added, “The fact that the Iranian regime gave Alireza Arafi membership of the Interim Leadership Council is an indication that he may be a leading candidate to replace Ali Khamenei as supreme leader.
Arafi is also being watched in Washington. In an interview with Fox News Digital on Sunday, Rep. Brian Mast, R-Fla., chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, described Arafi as “”a very radical cleric”.
Fierce accusations have emerged from Iran’s detained protesters as the regime claims the protests are ‘over treason’. (Morteza Nicoubazal/NurPhoto via Getty Images/NCRI)
He noted, “Arafi has been promoted – the head of Iran’s seminaries, the head of Al-Mustafa University, and serves as a member of the Guardian Council and the Assembly of Experts. In addition, he is the Friday prayer leader of the Qoum, the center of Iranian clergy. This gives him the experience to transform into a religious, academic and supra-governmental leader.”
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According to UANI, Arafi promised “death” to protesters who knocked down the turbans of Iranian Islamic clerics. “Those who attack pastors’ turbans should know that the turban will become their shroud,” Arafi said.
Brodsky added that “Arafi helped turn al-Mustafa University into a training ground and recruiting center for the IRGC (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps). Al-Mustafa University was later sanctioned by the US government under counter-terrorism authorities. The weakness of his candidacy to replace Khamenei is that he has never been a member of Iran’s military branch. The government apparatus of the Islamic Republic.”
Iranian President Massoud Pezheshkian, Judiciary Chief Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ajei and Assembly of Experts Vice President Alireza Arafi (right) attend a meeting of Iran’s Interim Leadership Council, at an undisclosed location, amid the US-Israel conflict in Iran. (Handout via Reuters)
“He’s not even a Sayyid. (A mark of high respect in the Shia tradition for people from the lineage of the Prophet Muhammad.) But his service on the Interim Leadership Council will reveal that. Foreign Policy and Security Issues By and large, and position him as a strong contender. Alireza Arafi is a follower of Khomeinism and has led the effort to further Islamize Iran’s university and seminary system,” he said.
According to Iran Wire, an independent Iranian diaspora news outlet, “Alireza Arafi is a prominent hardline cleric, a member of the Guardian Council and the head of Iran’s seminaries, positions that place him at the heart of the country’s religious establishment. His selection is important because the third member of the Provisional Leadership Council – a Disserologist selected by the Council and a member of the Experian Council – is widely seen as a staunch loyalist of the core ideology of the Islamic Republic.”
On March 1, 2026, in Sanaa, Yemen. Pro-Iranian protesters held billboards depicting Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Hosseini Khamenei, Yemeni and Iranian flags, weapons, US-Israeli airstrikes on Iran, and slogans at rallies to protest the assassination of Khamenei and several military officers. (Mohammed Hamood/Getty Images)
Mardo Soghom, a veteran journalist and Iran expert, told Fox News Digital, “What I can say at this point is that there is no unified government that has enough control over the country. The foreign minister admits that the IRGC is on its own. Arafi has never had the authority or control that Khamenei has. This is a compromise candidate that the IRGC cannot control two facts and two facts cannot control.
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“The state or what’s left of it is no different than a terrorist group,” Maryam Memarsadeghi, a senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute and founder and director of the Cyrus Forum for the Future of Iran, told Fox News Digital. America and Israel are bombing America and Israel, every leader the terrorist group chooses will be rightfully eliminated. Iranians are happy. All decent human beings who believe in freedom should rejoice.”
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