Iranians mourn Ali Larijani, Iran’s national security chief, who was killed in an Israeli air strike. Photo / Getty Images
It took 20 one-ton bombs to remove the one Iranian official who could end the war.
Ali Larijani was the person Western diplomats believed could actually deliver on agreements and understood how to give hardliners political cover for compromises.
Larijani’s death now forces Iran to choose between two fundamentally different paths forward.
The Islamic Republic could select a moderate figure who can negotiate with the United States and end the devastation, or double down with a Revolutionary Guard hardliner who will refuse to compromise and fight on.
The supreme national security council, of which Larijani was secretary, is Iran’s highest security decision-making body.
It is chaired by the President and includes the heads of the judiciary and Parliament, Foreign and Interior Ministers, an Intelligence Minister, two representatives appointed by the Supreme Leader, and commanders from the Revolutionary Guards and regular military.
Like most sensitive positions in Iran, the appointment requires the Supreme Leader’s approval.
But with Mojtaba Khamenei absent, there is a real danger that the strongmen of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) dominate proceedings and install someone who will not engage with America and plunge the Islamic Republic into further crisis.
Hassan Rouhani, 77, the former President of Iran, is the most obvious candidate to lead Iran towards negotiated de-escalation.
While deputy speaker of the Iranian Parliament, he juggled his time between Tehran and Glasgow, where he completed a PhD in constitutional law at Glasgow Caledonian University in November 1999.
He has had the job of council secretary before – and lasted 16 years under four different presidents.
He then served as President himself from 2013-2021, successfully negotiating the 2015 nuclear deal – the same agreement that collapsed when Donald Trump withdrew in 2018.
Rouhani is a member of the council now and has both the institutional position and the practical experience required to structure talks with Washington.
He understands Western negotiating styles, maintains relationships with European leaders, and has demonstrated the ability to sell compromises to Iranian hardliners by framing them as tactical retreats rather than strategic defeat.
Under Rouhani, Iran could pursue the 2015 playbook: acknowledge that the current trajectory leads to destruction, accept significant constraints on nuclear and military programmes in exchange for sanctions relief and an end to strikes, and bet on economic recovery to stabilise the system.
The challenge is that Rouhani represents everything Revolutionary Guard commanders despise about the “reformist” approach to foreign policy.
They blame him for the nuclear deal that they argue gave up Iranian leverage for empty promises, for economic policies that made Iran dependent on Western trade and for a diplomatic posture they see as weakness that invited Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign.
Ali Akbar Salehi, 76, presents a similar profile, but with different optics.
He is not a member of the council, but wartime emergency powers could allow his appointment as a special negotiator tasked specifically with ending the war.
Salehi served as foreign minister under Mahmoud Ahmadinejad when he was President and as head of the Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran under Rouhani, giving him credibility with both hardline and moderate factions.
He holds a PhD from MIT, speaks fluent English and was the principal Iranian interlocutor with the United States during the secret negotiations that led to the 2015 deal.
American negotiators who dealt with Salehi describe him as technically competent, genuinely committed to Iranian national interests rather than revolutionary ideology, and capable of translating between Western diplomatic language and the internal politics of the Islamic Republic.
Under Salehi, Iran could pursue a more limited negotiation focused specifically on ending the current war rather than resolving all outstanding issues with the West – essentially a ceasefire-plus arrangement that stops the bombing in exchange for Iranian commitments not to restart nuclear enrichment or attack shipping in the Strait of Hormuz.
Both Rouhani and Salehi offer Iran a clear off-ramp.
The risk is that this path requires trusting the United States to honour agreements after Trump violated the 2015 deal, bombed the country twice during talks, and accepting that Iran’s regional influence and nuclear ambitions must be permanently constrained.
Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, 63, is the Revolutionary Guard’s preferred choice. His answer to the current crisis is to fight harder.
He is the current speaker of parliament, a former IRGC commander and former Tehran mayor.
Ghalibaf comes from the military side of the Islamic Republic and sees the current war through the lens of resistance rather than negotiation.
Under Ghalibaf, Iran would pursue maximum escalation and expanded missile attacks on Israel and US bases. There would be more proxy attacks, complete closure of Hormuz with mines and submarine attacks, and the mobilisation of Basij militia for domestic control.
The logic is that America cannot sustain a prolonged Middle East war, that oil at more than US$100 per barrel will force Western economies to pressure Trump for de-escalation, and that Israel cannot indefinitely maintain the military might required to destroy Iran’s dispersed weapons systems.
Ghalibaf believes Iran can outlast American will if it accepts sufficient punishment in the short term.
Saeed Jalili, 60, offers a similar hardline approach with an ideological rather than military justification.
He served as Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator from 2007-2013 under Ahmadinejad, presiding over the period when Iran’s nuclear programme advanced most rapidly while international sanctions intensified.
He has a higher chance of becoming the next secretary, as he is the only remaining council member who was directly appointed by Ali Khamenei, the former supreme leader, who was killed in the first strike of the war.
Western negotiators who dealt with Jalili describe him as ideologically rigid, uninterested in compromise and convinced that Iranian concessions would be met with additional demands rather than reciprocal gestures.
He believes the Islamic Republic’s legitimacy derives from resistance to Western hegemony and that survival requires maintaining revolutionary principles even at catastrophic cost.
Under Jalili, Iran would refuse negotiations entirely, frame the war as an existential struggle between Islamic resistance and American imperialism, and prepare the population for years of war and privation in service of eventual victory or martyrdom.
The decision Iran makes in the coming days will determine whether the Islamic Republic survives in some form or disintegrates under the weight of its own internal battles.
What remains is a binary choice between survival through compromise or destruction through resistance.
Masoud Pezeshkian, the President, has minimal authority. The real decision will be made by the Supreme Leader’s office, the IRGC command structure, and senior clerics – with Pezeshkian rubber-stamping whatever they decide.
There is no middle path available now that Larijani is dead.