Ali Larijani — Iran’s ultimate backroom powerbroker

Veteran Iranian politician Ali Larijani was one of the most powerful figures in the Islamic republic, an architect of its security policy, and a close adviser to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei until the supreme leader’s assassination in an airstrike last month.

Larijani, 67, was assassinated by a US-Israeli air attack as he was visiting his daughter in the eastern outskirts of a Tehran suburb, Iran’s semi-official Fars news agency said on Tuesday.

The scion of a leading clerical family with brothers who ​rose to high positions after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Larijani was seen as canny and pragmatic but always fiercely determined to uphold Iran’s theocratic system of government.

A Revolutionary Guard Corps commander during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, he became head of Iran’s ‌national broadcaster before stints running the Supreme National Security Council either side of his membership of parliament, where he was speaker for 12 years.

His role as the ultimate insider in Ali Khamenei’s Iran gave him responsibilities across a wide portfolio that included critical nuclear negotiations with the West, managing Tehran’s regional ties and the suppression of internal unrest.

Despite his unswerving commitment to Khamenei’s absolute rule, he advocated a more cautionary approach than did other hardline figures, sometimes willing to further Iran’s goals through diplomacy and to meet domestic opposition with soothing words.

But despite his relative moderation, he played an allegedly central role in the crushing of mass protests in January. The violent repression, which killed several of protesters, led Washington to impose sanctions ​on him last month.

After the US-Israeli strikes began on February 28, he was one of the first major Iranian figures to speak, accusing Iran’s attackers of seeking to disintegrate and plunder the country. He also issued stern warnings against any would-be protesters.

He had also helped design Iran’s nuclear policy. In pursuing that policy, he projected the voice of the supreme leader, using his abilities ⁠as a communicator to build a rapport with Western negotiators and lay out Khamenei’s vision in frequent television interviews.

Rise after revolution

Ali Larijani was born in 1958 in Iraq’s great shrine city of Najaf, the home of many major Iranian clerics like his father who had fled what they saw as the oppressive rule of the shah.

He moved to Iran as a child, later focusing on ​his studies and earning a philosophy PhD. But the clerical milieu of his family would have made him keenly aware of the revolutionary religious currents surging through his homeland in the 1970s.

When Larijani was 20 years old, the Islamic Revolution overthrew the shah and installed Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini as supreme leader.

When Iraq invaded Iran along a 500-mile front months after the revolution, Larijani joined the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a new, ideologically driven, military unit devoted to Khomeini.

As the war with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq became the great crucible testing the mettle of a new generation of Iranian leaders, Larijani rose up to become a staff officer, a commander focused on the organisational duties behind the front that dictated the war effort.

His ​success in that role, alongside his family connections, helped spur his rise in the new Islamic republic. They also ensured his close ties to the Guards, a military institution whose importance would continue growing throughout his life.

After the war, Larijani became culture minister and then head of Iran’s state broadcaster, IRIB, a ​critical role in a country where ideological messaging has always been central to the exercise of internal power.

Larijani was appointed to the cabinet by the mercurial president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, in office from 1989 to 1997. Khamenei, meanwhile, became supreme leader in 1989, upon the death of Khomeini.

Larijani would have a ringside seat for the years-long power ‌struggle between Rafsanjani ⁠and Khamenei, an unrivalled lesson in high Iranian politics.

His time at IRIB was followed by a stint as head of the Supreme National Security Council, Iran’s top foreign and security policy body. A failed presidential bid followed, in 2005, before his election to parliament two years later.

Two of his brothers were enjoying high office, too, the signs of a family on the make.

His eldest brother, Mohammad-Javad, was a member of parliament before becoming a senior adviser to Khamenei. A younger brother, Sadiq, had become a cleric and risen to head the judiciary.

Chief nuclear negotiator

As chief nuclear negotiator from 2005 to 2007, Larijani was responsible for defending what Tehran says is its right to enrich uranium, a process required to make fuel for a nuclear power plant but which can also yield material for a warhead.

Pressure on Iran over its nuclear programme had ratcheted up after the discovery in 2003 that the country had enrichment facilities it had not disclosed to international inspectors, prompting ​fears it was seeking a bomb and leading to sanctions.

It has always ​denied wanting a bomb.

Larijani likened European incentives to abandon nuclear fuel production ⁠to “exchanging a pearl for a candy bar”. Though he was widely regarded as a pragmatist, he said that Iran’s nuclear programme “can never be destroyed”.

“Because once you have discovered a technology, they can’t take the discovery away,” he told PBS’s Frontline programme in September 2025. “It’s as if you are the inventor of some machine, and the machine is stolen from you. You can still make it again.”

Larijani made repeated visits to Moscow and met President Vladimir Putin, helping Khamenei manage a key ​ally and world power that acted as a counterweight to pressure from the first and second administrations of US President Donald Trump.

He was also tasked with advancing negotiations with China, which led to a 25-year cooperation agreement ​in 2021.

As parliament speaker from 2008 to 2020, ⁠he had a role in ensuring that a nuclear deal with six world powers in 2015 would meet the requirements of sceptical Iranian hardliners. Trump withdrew the US from the hard-negotiated agreement during his first term, in 2018.

Role in crushing protests

Larijani was again appointed head of the Supreme National Security Council last year, after a 12-day air war launched by Israel.

He was working to avert an attack on Iran until shortly before the war began.

“In my view, this issue is resolvable,” Larijani told Oman state television early this year, referring to the talks with the US “If the Americans’ concern is that Iran should not move toward acquiring a nuclear weapon, that can be ⁠addressed.”

But Washington also denounced ​him for the council’s role in crushing mass protests in January, even after he and other senior politicians had initially said that demonstrations over the economy were permissible.

According to a US ​government announcement detailing sanctions against him and other officials in response to the crackdown, Larijani was at the forefront of the repression.

“Larijani was one of the first Iranian leaders to call for violence in response to the legitimate demands of the Iranian people,” a US Treasury statement claimed on January 15, saying he had acted at Khamenei’s behest.

One of Larijani’s daughters, meanwhile, was dismissed from a medical teaching position at Emory University, in the US, following protests by Iranian-American activists angered by his role suppressing the demonstrations.

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Header image: Ali Larijani speaks at a press conference after registering as a candidate for the presidential election at the Interior Ministry, in Tehran, Iran May 31, 2024. — Reuters/ File