The current Iranian political system has spent its 47 years of life under the shadow of a charismatic personality who marked its course: that of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, its founder and first supreme leader (1979-1989). Often defined as the “ayatollah regime”—Khomeini protected the protection of jurisconsults (clerics) over state decisions—the Islamic Republic is an autocracy that has continued to function, even after Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was killed. And he continues to do so while his successor, Mojtaba Khamenei, remains missing. According to various speculations, Khamenei could be injured or even incapable of governing.
Tehran flatly denies this. This Thursday, the Iranian Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, Saeed Khatibzadeh, assured the semi-official ISNA agency that the supreme leader enjoys “complete health” and that he has “control of everything in his hands.” Also that he was “in his office”, once the Israeli and American bombings have ceased for the moment under the fragile ceasefire agreement announced on Wednesday.
These statements, on the same day that a large demonstration in Tehran commemorated the end of the 40 days of mourning for the death of Khamenei Sr. – who has not yet been buried – do not clear up the mystery about where and how the new supreme leader, 56, is doing. In the previous days, unverified information has followed one another and contradicted one another, with only one piece of evidence: there is no public trace of either his image or his voice since February 28, when his father died in one of the first bombings against Iran. Nor since his appointment on March 8 as .
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This is how Iran’s state television announced the ceasefire with the United States
Last Tuesday, the British newspaper The Timeswhich cited an alleged memo from US and Israeli intelligence, published that the Iranian president was “unconscious” and “serious”; unable, therefore, to participate in the government or in decisions about the war. Surprisingly (given that the United States and, above all, Israel, have reiterated their intention to kill him), the memo revealed where these intelligence services placed the Iranian supreme leader: in Qom, about 140 kilometers south of Tehran. There, the article said, Khamenei is being treated for his injuries.
The Times He stated, always referring to the cited source, that the leader is so close to death that he could even be buried in a mausoleum that is being planned in that holy Shiite city to house the body of his father.
Two days after what appears to be a leak to the British newspaper, this Thursday —shortly before the statements of the Iranian vice foreign minister—, another medium, this time the American portal , published an article in which he attributes the decision to reach an agreement with the United States to the intervention and instructions of Mojtaba Khamenei. Axios cites three sources; one of them, an “Israeli official.”
Since his appointment as successor, the new supreme leader has not appeared in public. Yes, they have been spread, read by television announcers or on social networks, such as the one that was released this Thursday, in which Khamenei supposedly assured that his country is not seeking war.
Iran had claimed, shortly after his appointment in March, that the new leader was injured, although not seriously, in the same air attack that killed his father, mother and other relatives. Paradoxically in Western eyes, this announcement was aimed at increasing the symbolic capital that for the Shiites the status of “living martyr” has; That is, someone who is physically or emotionally injured, or loses family members in war, thus demonstrating their willingness to martyrdom.
The Iranian authorities had already indicated before this Thursday that their new leader “is in charge.” Last week, the spokesman for the Iranian Foreign Ministry, Esmaeil Baqaei, stated that he is “completely healthy” and tried to address the rumors, maintaining that “it is not unusual” in times of war.
“It is very possible that Mojtaba Khamenei is incapacitated, since there are no signs of life on his part,” Ali Alfoneh, an Iranian political scientist and senior researcher at the Arab Gulf States Institute (AGSI), says by email from Washington. This expert points out a fact that goes in that direction: “Other Iranian leaders have issued video messages from safe places.”
His possible incapacity, Alfoneh points out, has not however caused a in facteven during the last year of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s life.”
“That leadership is made up of the president [Masud Pezeshkián]; the president of parliament [Mohamed Baqer Qalibaf, ]; the head of the judiciary [Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Eje’i]; a representative of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (either Major General Mohsen Rezaei or Brigadier General Ahmad Vahidi); and a representative of the regular army,” details the specialist. That collective leadership, he insists, “continues under the command of Mojtaba Khamenei.”
Message to the population
When Mojtaba Khamenei was named the new supreme leader, it was interpreted as a challenge to Donald Trump, who had opposed his appointment. The president of the United States was then the subject of abundant ridicule on social networks, which pointed out that one of the “achievements” of the war was having replaced an elderly Khamenei with a younger, more radical Khamenei. The Islamic Republic meanwhile tried to show two things, as analyzed by various experts at the time: one, the continuity and solidity of the system; two, that at no time has there been a power vacuum, not even momentary, in Iran.
And that was precisely one of the objectives of Israel and the United States: to cause an institutional vacuum in the Islamic Republic by killing its leader, in the hope that, by eliminating the ace from the equation and bombing the country, the regime would collapse like a house of cards.
40 days after the death of Khamenei Sr., the Iranian regime does not seem to be faltering nor is there any sign of such emptiness, despite the notable absence of the supreme leader and the assassination in different bombings of numerous provosts of the regime. However, Washington has fueled rumors regarding Khamenei Jr., which allow him to defend a victory speech by describing Iran as a headless country, with no one in charge. Or in the hands of an injured, unconscious or even dead leader.
On March 14, Pete Hegseth said that Mojtaba Khamenei had been “disfigured” in the bombing that killed his father. In that intervention, Hegseth described the president as a cornered animal, and the Islamic Republic as a ship without a helmsman: “He is scared, he is injured, he is a fugitive and he lacks legitimacy. For them, it is chaos. It is not known who is in charge in Iran,” he said.
Two days later, the American tabloid The New York Post published information in which it presented Khamenei as a leader delegitimized in the eyes of the Islamic Republic itself due to his alleged homosexuality. The sources cited in the article were two “intelligence officials” and another “close to the White House.”
Another rumor picked up in mid-March by the Kuwaiti newspaper Al Jarida placed the Iranian supreme leader in Moscow, where the media claimed that he had been transferred on a Russian military plane to be treated for his wounds at the offer of Russian President Vladimir Putin himself. When journalists asked Dmitri Peskov about this matter, the Kremlin spokesman did not answer.
Even before his appointment, Mojtaba Khamenei was a man in the shadows, whose voice most Iranians did not even know. Still, he undoubtedly had power. He had been the deputy for political and security affairs in his father’s office, and his ties to the Revolutionary Guard and its intelligence apparatus were close. Some links that have been decisive in his rise to power, according to analysts.
However, Iran has never been a one-man regime. The absence, at least public, of Khamenei without creating a power vacuum has, in fact, “a solid historical precedent,” recalls Ali Alfoneh.
“In 1980, Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, founder of the Islamic Republic, suffered an acute myocardial infarction and, until his death in 1989, Iran was governed by a collective leadership composed of President Ali Khamenei, Parliament Speaker Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, Judiciary Chief Mousavi Ardabili, and the leader’s son Ahmad Khomeini, who wore the signet ring. of his father to promulgate decrees that legitimized the decisions of the triumvirate,” he explains.
The “only difference” that the AGSI researcher sees with the current situation is that now “and, on paper, the regular army also participate in strategic decision-making,” as a sign of the “greater influence.”
