When Ali Khamenei was killed on Feb. 28, the war the US and Israel were waging on Iran took out not just a supreme leader but a generation of Tehran’s political and military elite alongside him. The hole at the top of the regime was patched briefly by a Provisional Leadership Council under President Masoud Pezeshkian. Then, on March 8, the Assembly of Experts named Mojtaba Ali Khamenei the third Supreme Leader of the Revolution, as the successor to his father.
The new leader has not appeared in public. Not a single photograph, video or even audio recording has emerged to confirm his presence at the helm. The silence has fed a cottage industry of speculation, with competing claims circulating inside and outside Iran: that he is dead, gravely ill, or has been wounded.
Having followed the war in the Gulf, day by day, and after consulting sources inside and outside Iran, my own assessment — credible, if not final — is this: Mojtaba Khamenei is alive. He was injured, but is recovering. And he is still running the country through a tight circle of confidants and behind a wall of extraordinary security.
So why the blackout? Three reasons.
The first is straightforward: Keep him alive. Tehran has no intention of giving US or Israeli intelligence the kind of opening that led to his father’s death. Losing a second supreme leader in months would be catastrophic, and the Assembly of Experts would struggle to coalesce around a third.
The second is about the picture itself. When a new leader does step into view, especially in wartime, he cannot look weak. He cannot look broken. In a conflict where optics is a weapon, a frail or scarred supreme leader would be a gift to the enemy. Tehran has calculated that showing a visibly wounded supreme leader would serve its enemies more than its own people.
The IRGC is more powerful than it was before the war. That much is true. But it does not hold a monopoly on decision-making.
Hassan Al-Mustafa
Reports corroborated by multiple sources say Mojtaba Khamenei was hit in the leg, was left with a facial scar, and at one point could not walk. If true, the silence is in itself a message: Do not demoralize the public at home, and do not hand Washington and Tel Aviv leverage at the negotiating table.
The third is by design. Strategic ambiguity has long been a tool of Iranian statecraft. The blurrier the picture inside the regime, the more room Tehran has to maneuver, and the harder it is for foreign analysts to chart the new chain of command. The fog is a feature, not a bug, for it invites speculation, most of it untethered from accurate inside information.
A narrative has solidified coming from prominent Western think tanks, newspapers, and magazines: Mojtaba Khamenei is dead or incapacitated, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has seized the wheel, a brutal succession fight is underway. However, these theories do not describe the Iran that exists; they describe the Iran their authors expected after the elder Khamenei was killed, a projection dressed up as rigorous analysis.
To read the new leadership clearly, you have to read it on its own terms, not through affection or contempt. Emotion, when it drives the analysis, ruins the analysis.
The IRGC is more powerful than it was before the war. That much is true. But it does not hold a monopoly on decision-making. Power is distributed across an interlocking set of institutions, all sitting under the supreme leader’s office. They answer to the supreme jurist. Whatever turf disputes exist among them are mediated by directives from Mojtaba Khamenei, who is, according to the constitution, both commander-in-chief and the chief architect of the country’s foreign policy.
The key players right now are the IRGC, the Supreme National Security Council, the Foreign Ministry, the Expediency Discernment Council, and Speaker of Parliament Mohammed Bagher Ghalibaf, whose standing rests on the support of former military figures such as Ahmad Vahidi and Mohammed Bagher Zolghadr, and ultimately on the trust of the supreme leader.
Pezeshkian is in the room, but the presidency is no longer where decisions are made. Its writ runs to domestic administration. On the war and foreign policy, the Supreme National Security Council is the body that matters, with the IRGC and the intelligence services represented at the table. Decisions flow upward and the supreme leader signs off, vetoes, or amends them.
The New York Times has reported that Mojtaba Khamenei’s health is improving and his mind is sharp. The orders are still his, passed down a long chain of trusted couriers, by deliberately old-fashioned low-tech means, to keep him alive.
BY: Writer Hassan Al-Mustafa is a Saudi writer and researcher specializing in Islamist movements, the evolution of religious discourse, and relations between the Gulf states and Iran.
Disclaimer: Views expressed by writers in this section are their own and do not necessarily reflect The Times Union‘ point of view
