In response to Donald Trump’s claims that Iran was appealing to Washington to negotiate, Ali Larijani, the most powerful man in the Islamic Republic, issued a terse statement in Farsi: “There will be no negotiations with the United States.” Tehran is wary of accepting a ceasefire as it did at the end of the Twelve-Day War launched by the United States and Israel in June, which it calculates would simply give its enemies time to regroup and attack again in a matter of months.

The killing of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has clarified the minds of military planners by making it clear that Iran must escalate to survive. Tehran’s strategy is to exact a cost against the US and Israel great enough to secure a durable peace. Larijani dismissed Trump’s war aim of destroying Iran’s mobile ballistic programme and navy as “delusional fantasies” and accused the president of sacrificing US soldiers for Israel.

In the wake of America’s decapitation strike against Khamenei, who perished with up to two hundred senior military and civilian figures, as well as two generations of his family, Iran’s war is being run by the Supreme National Security Council, chaired by Larijani. A new Provisional Leadership Council is being convened with President Masoud Pezeshkian, judiciary chief Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei, and Ayatollah Alireza Arafi as members. The Assembly of Experts, a body of clerics appointed directly and indirectly by the supreme leader, is now working to select his replacement. The Islamic Republic is an interlocking network of institutions that check and balance one another, designed to survive decapitation.