Ali Larijani

Ali Ardashir Larijani was born on 3 June 1958 in Najaf, Iraq, the main centre of Shia scholarship outside Iran. His parents were Iranians of Mazandarani background from a religious gentry family based in Amol. His father, Mirza Hashem Amoli (Hashim Larijani), was a grand ayatollah who had moved to Najaf in 1931 under pressure from Reza Shah's government, and his maternal grandfather, Mohsen Ashrafi, was also a grand ayatollah. The family returned to Iran in 1961.

He grew up among brothers who would all reach senior posts: Sadeq Amoli Larijani (head of the judiciary and later chair of the Expediency Council), Mohammad-Javad Larijani (diplomat and human rights official), Bagher Larijani (medical academic at Tehran University of Medical Sciences) and Fazel Larijani (former cultural attache in Ottawa). Time magazine dubbed the family the "Kennedys of Iran" in 2009. The conservative politician Ahmad Tavakkoli was his cousin.

Larijani studied at the Qom Seminary and earned a bachelor's degree in mathematics and computer science from Aryamehr University of Technology (now Sharif University of Technology) around the time of the 1979 revolution. He had intended to continue in computer science but, after consulting the cleric and thinker Morteza Motahhari, turned to Western philosophy. He took a master's degree and a PhD at the University of Tehran; his 1995 thesis was on Kant's philosophy of mathematics, supervised by Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel.

He taught at the University of Tehran's Faculty of Literature and Humanities and published several books, including The Mathematical Method in Kant's Philosophy, Metaphysics and the Exact Sciences in Kant's Philosophy, and Intuition and the Synthetic A Priori Judgments in Kant's Philosophy (all 2004), the essay collection Fresh Air (2005) and Reason and Tranquility in Governance (2024). He also wrote on the analytic philosophers Saul Kripke and David Lewis.

Larijani joined the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in 1981, served during the Iran-Iraq War (1980 to 1988), held the rank of brigadier general and was deputy chief of the IRGC Joint Staff from 1989 to 1992. He also served as a deputy minister for legal and parliamentary affairs and as deputy minister of labour.

Under President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani he was minister of culture and Islamic guidance from 1992 to 1994, succeeding Mohammad Khatami. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei then appointed him head of Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting, which he ran from 1994 to 2004. He became a member of the Expediency Discernment Council in 1997 and in 2004 a security adviser to Khamenei.

Larijani was the main candidate of the conservative coordination council in the 2005 presidential election but finished sixth with 5.94 percent of the vote; Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won. In August 2005 he succeeded Hassan Rouhani as secretary of the Supreme National Security Council and chief nuclear negotiator, holding talks with EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana as the United Nations Security Council demanded Iran halt uranium enrichment. Iranian analysts said he favoured a more pragmatic approach than the president, and after earlier resignations were turned down, his resignation was accepted on 20 October 2007. He was replaced by Saeed Jalili.

Larijani won a seat for Qom in the March 2008 parliamentary election and became speaker of the Islamic Consultative Assembly in May 2008. He was re-elected to parliament in 2012 with the highest vote in Qom and again in 2016, when he ran as an independent backed by the reformist List of Hope, and he held the speakership until May 2020. During the disputed 2009 presidential election he suggested some authorities had taken sides, though he later denied reports that he had congratulated Mir Hossein Mousavi.

As speaker he supported President Hassan Rouhani's diplomacy and was considered instrumental in securing parliamentary approval of the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. After leaving parliament he returned to the Expediency Discernment Council in 2020.

The Guardian Council disqualified Larijani from the 2021 presidential election, a decision that surprised both conservatives and reformists, and again in 2024. No official reason was given; Britannica reports that his daughter's residence in the United States was cited and that Khamenei was believed not to want figures linked to Rouhani's government in the race. Larijani called the 2024 decision "non-transparent".

On 5 August 2025, following the June 2025 war with Israel and US strikes on Iranian nuclear sites, President Masoud Pezeshkian appointed him secretary of the Supreme National Security Council for a second time. In October 2025 he declared a cooperation arrangement with the International Atomic Energy Agency no longer effective, and in February 2026 he was involved in indirect talks with the United States mediated by Oman.

Larijani was associated with the traditional right and the Islamic Coalition Party, but was later described as a centre-right or moderate conservative who slowly distanced himself from the Principlist camp. He was regarded as a hardliner on relations with the West but a pragmatist at home, and was reported to admire Deng Xiaoping's model of gradual economic opening. Analyst Ali Alfoneh described him as an Iranian nationalist. He regarded guardianship of the Islamic jurist (velayat-e faqih) as a form of democracy and was strongly influenced by his father-in-law Morteza Motahhari. In March 2025 he warned that Iran would have no choice but to pursue nuclear weapons if attacked by the United States, Israel or their allies.

As head of state broadcasting from 1994 to 2004, Larijani was criticised for using television to discredit intellectuals and dissidents, and the network aired forced confessions of political activists, a practice human rights organisations condemned.

After returning to the Supreme National Security Council, he was identified by human rights monitors, Britannica and The New York Times as a principal architect of the lethal response to the nationwide protests of late 2025 and January 2026. He labelled demonstrators "armed terrorist networks", and monitors estimate that thousands were killed, many on 8 and 9 January 2026. The United States Treasury sanctioned him in January 2026 for coordinating the suppression of protests. In March 2026 the US State Department offered a reward of up to 10 million dollars for information on him and other senior officials. His daughter Fatemeh, a physician, lost her post at Emory University's Winship Cancer Institute after protests by Iranian American activists and was later deported from the United States.

Larijani married Farideh Motahhari, daughter of Ayatollah Morteza Motahhari, at age 20. They had four children. Their daughter Fatemeh Ardeshir-Larijani trained in medicine at the University of Tehran and later worked in the United States, and their son Morteza was killed alongside his father in March 2026.

Larijani gave interviews to international outlets including Euronews, PBS NewsHour, FRONTLINE and Al Jazeera, and joined X in May 2021 as @alilarijani_ir, posting in Persian, Arabic and English to several hundred thousand followers. A March 2016 iPOS poll found 45 percent of Iranians approved of him, and a University of Maryland survey released in December 2025 found 43 percent viewed him favourably.

On the night of 16 to 17 March 2026, during the 2026 Iran war, Larijani was killed in an Israeli airstrike on the outskirts of Tehran. His son Morteza and the head of his office, Alireza Bayat, were also killed. Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz announced the strike and Iranian state media confirmed the death on 17 March. Fars News Agency said he had been visiting his daughter in eastern Tehran, while Israeli intelligence officials said he was tracked to a meeting at a hideout. Basij commander Gholamreza Soleimani was killed in a separate strike the same night.

Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei issued a statement of mourning and vowed revenge, and the Revolutionary Guards fired missiles at central Israel. A funeral was held in Tehran on 18 March, and on 19 March Larijani and his son were buried in the upper portico of the Fatima Masumeh Shrine in Qom. Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr succeeded him on 24 March 2026.

Larijani was one of the few figures who bridged Iran's clergy, the Revolutionary Guards, parliament and the supreme leader's office. Al Jazeera's Tehran correspondent described him as a bridge between the security apparatus, the military and the political establishment, and one of the key figures who might have revived hopes of de-escalation. A conservative Iranian analyst said his absence would reduce the chances of a low-cost political solution to the war. For his critics, his legacy is defined by state media propaganda and the bloody crackdown of January 2026.