Will Ali Larijani be head of state in Iran end of 2026?

This contract resolved the moment an Israeli airstrike hit Tehran on March 17, 2026. Ali Larijani was assassinated that day — confirmed by Iranian authorities shortly after. A contract requiring someone to be alive and exercising governing authority on December 31 has exactly one path to zero, and it happened. The pre-assassination pricing tells the more interesting story. Larijani had been running Iran's Supreme National Security Council and overseeing day-to-day governance in the immediate aftermath of Khamenei's death — effectively the most powerful operational figure in the Islamic Republic during its most critical transition in decades. His earlier odds reflected that genuine functional authority, not speculative positioning. Then he was killed, and every share of YES became worthless overnight. His assassination — alongside Khamenei's — represents the most consequential decapitation sequence in the Islamic Republic's history, compressing what might have been a managed, deliberate succession into a crisis that had to be resolved under fire. Mojtaba Khamenei's rapid selection by the Assembly of Experts happened in the context Larijani's death helped create: a regime that had lost its founder's son and its most capable day-to-day operator within weeks of each other. Bottom line: This contract is closed. Larijani's trajectory — from functional interim authority to zero — is the single most dramatic repricing event in this entire market family, and it reflects a real-world sequence that permanently altered Iran's political landscape.