This is fresh air. I'm Terry Gross. Iran's new supreme leader, Morshtubukhammi, is the son of the former

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomey, who was killed in an Israeli attack at the start of the war.

How does Morshtaba compare with his father, and what kind of leader might he be? Before the war, the Ayatollah's

regime massacred thousands of protesters.

President Trump sent the protesters this message. When we're finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take.

But has this war helped the protesters? And are we on the verge of World War III?

Those are some of the questions my guest Karim Sadapur will address. He's one of America's leading experts on Iran. He's a senior fellow at the

Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where he focuses on Iran and U.S. foreign policy toward

the Middle East. He's also an adjunct professor at Georgetown University and a contributing writer at the

Atlantic.

His parents are Iranian, but he was born and raised in the U.S.

We recorded our interview yesterday.

This morning we learned that an Israeli attack killed Ali Larajani, the head of Iran's Supreme National Security Council.

He was close with Ayatollah Khomeini and was expected to be a close advisor to Mojtaba.

This morning we asked Karim Sadapur about the significance of Larijani's death.

He says, quote, Larajani was one of Iran's most powerful men,

a ruthless pragmatist. After the Ayatollah's death, Larajani was one of the men running the country.

At a time when the regime's survival is at stake, Larajani's decades of domestic and foreign

policy experience make his loss a significant blow.

For a revolutionary regime whose political ideology is premised on martyrdom,

the central question is whether these assassinations will ultimately extinguish the ideology

or help revive it." Unquote.

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