Who Is Mojtaba Khamenei?
Iran’s Supreme Leader Since March, Still Unseen in Public
On paper, Iran is led by a man the world hasn’t seen since before spring. There are no photos, no videos, not even a blurry proof-of-life clip on state TV. Mojtaba Khamenei has been the supreme leader since March 9, attended six days of his father’s funeral this week, and has communicated with about 90 million Iranians mostly through written statements read by news presenters. This is the same man Donald Trump claims has agreed to “just about everything” Washington wants. It would be useful to know if he’s really the one making those decisions.
Let’s look at how he got the job, since it wasn’t supposed to happen this way. Ali Khamenei, who was killed with senior commanders in the February 28 strikes that started the war, had reportedly given his advisers a shortlist of three possible successors. His son wasn’t on that list. Elder Khamenei was said to have opposed giving the job to his son, cautious of a religious establishment that has spent 47 years saying the Islamic Republic doesn’t allow dynasties.
Two of the three men on the shortlist died in the same strikes as Ali Khamenei. After that, according to Iran International and later The New York Times, there were days of maneuvering as Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commanders pressured the Assembly of Experts, calling all 88 members one by one, to appoint Mojtaba instead.
Mojtaba won the first vote on March 3. Still, the announcement was delayed for almost a week because Ali Larijani, then head of Iran’s National Security Council, warned that naming Khamenei while Israel was searching for his father’s successor could be deadly. His concern was justified.
Israel’s military had already posted on Mojtaba’s Farsi-language account, promising to “pursue every successor,” and Trump had called him an “unacceptable” choice on ABC News days earlier. Iran announced him anyway on March 8, and Israeli strikes hit Tehran soon after.
This detail helps explain the current deadlock in negotiations: Mojtaba Khamenei has never held public office and was only a mid-level cleric before his promotion. He spent his career doing behind-the-scenes work, running the Basij paramilitary since 2009 and quietly serving as his father’s Vakil, similar to a chief-of-staff, instead of building a public profile.
Earlier reporting noted that Iran’s Assembly of Experts had to raise his religious rank to grand ayatollah after the fact to make his appointment seem credible, a status usually reserved for only the most senior clerics in Shia Islam. He got the title, but not the reputation.
Then came the injuries, making the situation even more unclear. Within weeks of his appointment, American and Israeli officials told reporters that Mojtaba had been hurt in the same area where his father was killed, but no one agreed on how serious the injuries were. U.S. Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth said he was wounded and “likely disfigured.” Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard told Congress he’d been “very seriously wounded.” Iranian state media told a different story, mentioning a fractured ankle, a healed back injury, and what an aide called a “small crack” behind his ear, while insisting he was otherwise in perfect health. He skipped Nowruz, the Persian New Year, a holiday his father always marked with a televised speech. Mojtaba sent a Telegram post instead.
None of these different stories has ever been backed up by an actual image. That’s the main issue. Iran’s state broadcaster has reported meetings with President Masoud Pezeshkian and the country’s armed forces chief, but hasn’t published any photos of these meetings. Written statements from Mojtaba keep coming, vowing revenge for “the martyrs,” promising to keep fighting, and threatening to open new fronts, but they are always read by a presenter, not by Mojtaba himself. In May, U.S. Ambassador to the UN Mike Waltz said that the fractured leadership, including what he called Mojtaba’s serious injuries, was slowing down peace talks. The talks are paused this week for a funeral, but in reality, they’ve been on and off since March, always coming back to the same unanswered question.
This is what’s really at stake. Trump can tell Joe Kernen that Iran has agreed to almost everything Washington wants. Qatari and Pakistani mediators can keep saying there’s progress. But negotiations need someone with the power to sign, and right now Iran’s leader hasn’t shown his own people or Washington that he’s fully up to the job. Reports say Iran’s military has switched to what analysts call a “mosaic defence,” giving more authority to local commanders because the chain of command above them is so uncertain. Any ceasefire deal based on economic incentives and open shipping lanes is only as strong as the person who can officially commit Iran to it. At the moment, that person is just a name on state TV, not someone anyone outside his security team has seen in four months.
