For 36 years, the query of who finally dominated Iran had one reply: Supreme Chief Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Whereas Iran has an elected president and legislature, that energy is subordinate to the non secular supreme chief, who has the final say over all international and home insurance policies and is the commander in chief of Iran’s standard army and the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard Corps. Every time the US confronted Iran, American policymakers knew it was Khamenei who would make the ultimate resolution.
- Three months after succeeding his father as supreme chief of Iran, Mojtaba Khamenei has nonetheless not been seen in public. He missed his father’s funeral on July 4.
- With the supreme chief taking a much less lively function, different energy gamers within the Iranian regime have develop into extra impartial and outspoken, jockeying for place within the new system.
- It’s nonetheless unclear precisely what the brand new system will appear to be. One chance is a much less overly non secular however nonetheless authoritarian and nationalistic regime.
They’re now not so certain, nonetheless. Joint US-Israeli airstrikes on the primary day of the warfare 4 months ended Khamenei’s rule. On July 4, tens of hundreds of mourners flooded the streets of Tehran for the previous supreme chief’s funeral, many waving flags and chanting slogans vowing vengeance towards america and Israel. The occasion started per week of mourning all through the nation earlier than Khamenei’s burial on Thursday.
Three of Khamenei’s sons had been in attendance on Sunday, however notably absent was Mojtaba Khamenei, who was named his father’s successor on March 4. Mojtaba Khamenei has not been seen in public since then and was additionally absent from his spouse’s funeral earlier within the week. No movies, audio recordings, or present pictures have been issued since then — solely written statements learn by the anchors on state tv or posted on his Telegram channel. Iranian TV networks have even resorted to airing AI-generated movies of him giving speeches.
There are some affordable explanations for why he’s laying low. Mojtaba is reportedly nonetheless recovering from extreme and disfiguring accidents to his legs and face suffered in the identical airstrike that killed his father and his spouse on February 28. And given the destiny of his relations and dozens of different senior officers, he might moderately assume that he was a goal. US officers consider that Khamenei is really alive and collaborating in decision-making. Nonetheless, his failure to look on the funeral disenchanted most of the mourners who had gathered, and the longer he stays out of view, the extra questions like the next might be raised:
Can anybody actually fill the Ayatollah’s sneakers? Might the troubled transition from father to son result in an Iran that’s concurrently much less overtly non secular however extra nationalistic and authoritarian than earlier than? And most significantly: Who really guidelines Iran in the present day?
The distinctive setup of the Iranian regime — civilian leaders, however a mullah who holds final energy — has been a complicating think about earlier rounds of diplomatic negotiations with america. Even when “moderates” who favored higher relations with the West had been in energy, any resolution needed to be signed off by the supreme chief, whose actual views weren’t all the time instantly obvious.
Nothing has modified within the transition from father to son concerning the formal powers Iran’s supreme chief holds. However whereas Khamenei has been taking some half within the present US-Iran ceasefire talks together with authorizing negotiators to hold out direct talks with the Individuals final month in a broadcast assertion and periodically weighing in on explicit negotiating factors, he doesn’t but seem like taking as lively a job as his father did in related conditions. “There may be proof that the ability that the supreme chief workout routines has diminished considerably,” mentioned Hussein Banai, an skilled on Iranian politics and professor at Indiana College Bloomington.
Particularly, he famous that the supreme chief usually performs a “central headquarters” function, getting all the regime’s factions on the identical web page, voicing a unified message. Iran’s politics has by no means been wholly unified: There are a number of facilities of energy, together with the non secular institution, the elected authorities, and the army, in addition to competing factions inside these facilities. However when the supreme chief weighed in, everybody aligned their message along with his.
No matter Mojtaba Khamenei’s present situation, that appears to be conspicuously absent now. “The president says what he desires; the speaker says what he desires,” Banai mentioned. “There isn’t any coordination.”
Mixed with the sheer variety of senior figures who had been killed by airstrikes, there’s one thing of an influence vacuum in Tehran proper now.
“Everyone seems to be combating for his or her relevance on this subsequent iteration of the Islamic Republic,” mentioned Sanam Vakil, director of the Center East program at Chatham Home.
On the civilian facet of the regime, there’s President Masoud Pezeshkian, a relative reasonable who took energy in 2024 after his predecessor was killed in a airplane crash. Whereas formally the second strongest chief in Iran, Pezeshkian noticed his energy and affect curtailed throughout the warfare. As an advocate for diplomacy, his place might enhance if the talks really ship financial aid for Iranians.
Extra outstanding in public in current weeks has been Mohammed Ghalibaf, the speaker of the Iranian parliament, who led the delegations conducting negotiations with america and seems often within the media to elucidate the federal government’s positions. As a publicity-hungry conservative populist generally known as a perennial presidential candidate and implicated in some shady actual property offers, Ghalibaf could have discovered his calling because the Iranian authorities’s level of contact with the Trump administration. Greater than another determine within the regime, he’s seen his public and worldwide profile rise because of the warfare.
However the diploma to which the civilians can really converse for the Iranian regime as an entire in these talks is maybe Iran’s single largest query after Mojtaba Khamenei’s actual standing. On the army facet, essentially the most important ascending determine could also be Ahmad Vahidi, commander in chief of the Revolutionary Guard, who has often overruled the moderates looking for a fast deal to finish the warfare. In response to reporting by the Wall Road Journal, it was Vahidi who pushed for Iran to launch new missile strikes in June, regardless of issues it will imperil the continuing ceasefire negotiations with the US. Vahidi is below US sanctions for the regime’s crackdowns on protests and is needed by Interpol for his alleged function within the 1994 bombing of a Jewish neighborhood middle in Argentina. However he’s not all the time averse to chopping offers with Individuals: He reportedly took half within the talks with the Reagan administration within the Nineteen Eighties that grew to become recognized within the US as Iran-Contra.
With varied voices and factions jockeying for affect, the query is simply who is definitely answerable for the Iranian system. “The system is in command of the system,” Vakil mentioned. “I do know all of us wish to suppose that there’s one person who has energy or authority. There’s nobody commander in chief. It’s a system that’s commanding collectively in the meanwhile.” All this might add as much as a much more unpredictable Iran going ahead.
President Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed that Iran’s new leaders are “way more affordable” than their predecessors, and high US officers declare to be growing productive relationships with their Iranian counterparts. However the Iranian management has additionally repeatedly proven in current weeks that it’s keen to threat blowing up the talks through the use of power when it feels its crimson strains are being crossed, whether or not that’s Israel’s incursions into Lebanon or threats to Tehran’s management of the Strait of Hormuz.
What’s going to the brand new Iranian regime appear to be?
In some unspecified time in the future, the world will get extra readability on Mojtaba Khamenei’s actual function, and a brand new system will click on into place. When the ability struggles shake out, that regime will most likely be not any extra democratic than Iran below the Ayatollah and positively no extra inclined to belief america. However it’s doable that an Iran will emerge that’s much less ideological, non secular, and revolutionary — and but doubtlessly extra aggressive — than what we’ve seen since 1979.
In a current article in Overseas Affairs, the Iranian-American students Narges Bajoghli and Vali Nasr argued that Iran’s extra “technocratic” new leaders, a lot of whom got here of age throughout the brutal Iran-Iraq warfare of the Nineteen Eighties fairly than the anti-Shah resistance of the Nineteen Seventies, could also be extra keen to interact in direct talks with the US than the extra ideological cohort led by Ali Khamenei, however could also be much more to threat power.
Greater adjustments might come on the home facet. Iran’s famously strict non secular legal guidelines had been already loosening a bit earlier than the warfare. Although sporting a hijab remains to be legally required for Iranian girls, the legislation is much less enforced and plenty of extra girls have been going with out the scarf because the “lady, life, freedom” protests in 2022. Some specialists count on Iran’s authorities, notably if the supreme chief is finally taking part in a muted function, to advertise a extra secular type of authoritarian nationalism. That will already be underway — the sight of partially and even unveiled girls at pro-regime rallies was one of many extra shocking developments of this warfare.
Vakil mentioned that the federal government is prone to proceed to level to faith as a justification for its insurance policies, however in a second of disaster and instability, the regime should select its battles, which can imply “tolerating girls strolling round sporting no matter they need.” What it is not going to imply, given the hardline positions males like Ghalibaf and Vahidi have taken throughout earlier mass protests, is tolerating dissent or opposition to the political system itself. The hopes, expressed by US and Israeli leaders on the outset of this warfare, that it will spark a public rebellion or fracturing of the regime, have clearly not come to cross.
The revolution is now almost 50 years previous, and alter was coming to Iran ultimately, whether or not the warfare occurred or not. It was already clear within the final years of Ali Khamenei’s life that the system he led was below stress from financial stagnation, worldwide isolation, and public discontent amongst a inhabitants, nearly all of whom don’t have any reminiscence of the 1979 revolution. The transition to his successor was anticipated to be a take a look at of whether or not the regime might reform itself to outlive one other technology. Due to US and Israeli airstrikes, that transition is occurring on an accelerated timeline.
The regime has proven it will possibly survive ‚ and arguably win — a warfare with way more highly effective adversaries. However a inhabitants determined for a return to normalcy could not get it for a while, given the unsure state of the ceasefire. Home divisions and rivalries that had been suppressed throughout wartime could reemerge now that the combating has principally stopped.
Proper now, many Iranians are questioning whether or not Mojtaba Khamenei is definitely in any form to carry out the function his father performed for 36 years. However the greater query could also be whether or not, in Iran’s new political actuality, that function will even exist for much longer.
Replace, 10:30 am ET, July 6, 2026: This piece was initially revealed on July 1 and has been up to date to mirror the information that Mojtaba Khamenei didn’t attend his father’s funeral on July 4.
