An Iranian woman carries a national flag and a portrait of Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in southern Tehran in December 2025. Morteza Nikoubaz / Morteza Nikoubazl via ReutersAdd NBC News to GoogleJan. 18, 2026, 6:39 AM ESTBy Alexander Smith, Babak Dehghanpisheh and Peter NicholasThe Iranian regime may have crushed the latest round of protests in its streets, but the Islamic Republic’s long-term leadership remains far from resolved. Whether by overthrow or old age, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, 86, will soon need a replacement, and this latest nationwide eruption has only drawn the question of his successor into sharper focus.“It’s time to look for new leadership in Iran,” Trump told Politico in an interview on Saturday. The unrest has also highlighted the complex divisions within Iran’s opposition, as well as its ruling clerical regime and security forces. The short answer is that Iran does not have any clear heir apparent, and that any transition away from the Islamic theocracy that has ruled for nearly 50 years is unlikely to be straightforward.“If Iran goes down the revolution path, it’s going to be the sort of Syria-fication of the country, and that will be very bloody,” Ellie Geranmayeh, a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, told NBC News. Leaderless unrestIran’s sanction-crushed economy is in perpetual crisis, and the regular protests and dwindling electoral turnout suggest “the regime is very unpopular and many Iranians want it replaced with a secular democracy,” said Barbara Slavin, a distinguished fellow at the Stimson Center, a Washington think tank. However, “the problem is the lack of organized opposition,” she said. Thousands of Iranians in cities across the country took to the streets in recent weeks. But what seems to be a relentless cycle of protests — 2009, 2019, 2022-23 and now 2025-26 — has failed to transform mass demonstrations into political results. Supporters of defeated Iranian presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi run past burning debris during riots in Tehran in June 2009. Olivier Laban-Mattei / There are liberal reformers, such as human rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize winner Narges Mohammadi, former Prime Minister Mir Hossein Mousavi or former deputy interior minister Mostafa Tajzadeh. But all of these are either languishing in jails or under house arrest.
