Iran International
Since becoming Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei has repeatedly used ba’sat, a term rooted in divine mission, to cast Iranians not just as citizens but as a force tasked with carrying forward the Islamic Republic’s project at home and beyond.
Around 20 messages and written statements have been issued in Mojtaba Khamenei’s name since the Assembly of Experts named him Iran’s new Supreme Leader on March 8.
Some have been routine: condolences, formal greetings and remarks for official occasions. But at least half go further, offering an early view of his political and ideological vocabulary.
They cover a wide range of subjects, from the army, parliament and the Persian language to Hajj, Shiite’s anniversary of Eid al-Ghadir, the Persian Gulf, the US-Iran memorandum of understanding and the so-called Axis of Resistance.
Read together, one word stands out: ba’sat (be’that).
In Islamic tradition, ba’sat refers to being chosen and sent on a divine mission. It is most closely associated with prophethood: the moment a prophet is commissioned to carry a message and fulfill a sacred duty.
In Mojtaba Khamenei’s messages, however, the word is not used only as a religious expression. It becomes a political language for describing the role of the people.
A sacred word enters politics
Mojtaba Khamenei has used ba’sat in several forms: the ba’sat of the Iranian nation, the ba’sat of the people, the ba’sat of artists, a mission-bearing nation and even a commissioned Islamic ummah.
The ummah, in Islamic political language, refers to the wider Muslim community beyond national borders.
In this framework, Iranians are not presented merely as citizens of a country, voters in a political system or supporters of the Islamic Republic.
They are described as bearers of a historical mission. That is where ba’sat becomes politically important.
It casts the people as the human force of a larger ideological project, rather than simply as a society expected to support the government.
The first clear example appeared in Mojtaba Khamenei’s Hajj message in late May.
He wrote that after the killing of Ali Khamenei, the Iranian nation experienced a divine ba’sat and astonished the world by appearing wherever its presence was needed.
The more revealing line came later. Following the ba’sat of the Iranian nation and the Axis of Resistance, he wrote, the ba’sat of the Islamic ummah would follow.
In a single sequence, he linked the Iranian people, Tehran’s regional network of allied forces and the wider Muslim world.
The message was not only that Iranians had awakened. It was that they had been assigned a role in a project extending beyond Iran’s borders.
People or a mission-bearing nation?
The same pattern appears in other messages. In a statement marking Ferdowsi Day, artists were asked to carry out their own ba’sat in continuation of the people’s ba’sat, and to record the story of this uprising for history.
In a message marking the start of the third year of the 12th parliament, the legislature was told to bring itself into line with a mission-bearing nation.
The chain is revealing.
The mission begins with the people, moves into culture and art, enters formal institutions such as parliament, and is then projected outward toward the Islamic ummah and the Axis of Resistance.
This is not just ceremonial language. In Mojtaba Khamenei’s early vocabulary, the people are not treated simply as a source of legitimacy or as a crowd mobilized for elections, funerals and rallies.
They are framed as a force expected to move the system forward.
That role is tied to resistance against the United States and Israel, support for Tehran’s regional allies, and the claim that Iran is helping shape a new regional and global order.
People inside an old project
This language also connects Mojtaba Khamenei to one of Ali Khamenei’s central ideological themes.
For years, the former Supreme Leader spoke of a five-stage process leading to a new Islamic civilization.
In that theory, the Islamic Revolution was only the beginning.
It was to be followed by an Islamic system, an Islamic government, an Islamic society and, finally, a new Islamic civilization.
Institutions alone were never enough for that project. The theory required society itself to be transformed, with people seeing themselves not merely as subjects of a government but as participants in a long ideological struggle.
Mojtaba Khamenei’s use of ba’sat appears to supply that missing human engine.
If Ali Khamenei’s five-stage theory was the roadmap, ba’sat is Mojtaba Khamenei’s way of describing the people expected to carry it forward.
The Iranian nation becomes mission-bearing. Artists must narrate that mission. Parliament must adjust itself to it. The Axis of Resistance gives it regional depth. And the Islamic ummah gives it a transnational horizon.
Resistance remains central
This is why ba’sat matters beyond the number of times it appears.
Terms such as resistance, America, Israel and the Iranian nation have long been central to the Islamic Republic’s political vocabulary.
Ba’sat does something more specific. It redefines the relationship between people and power.
In this view, people are not only expected to obey, vote, mourn, rally or endure.
They are said to have been commissioned into a larger project, one that links domestic loyalty to regional confrontation and an imagined future order.
In Mojtaba Khamenei’s first message after becoming Supreme Leader, he described the Axis of Resistance as an inseparable part of the values of the Islamic Revolution.
In later messages, he returned to Lebanon, Palestine, Iraq and Yemen.
After the US-Iran memorandum, he said he had initially opposed the agreement but allowed its implementation because the president and the Supreme National Security Council had pledged to protect both the rights of the Iranian nation and those of the Axis of Resistance.
In his Persian Gulf message, he linked the policy of resistance and a strong Iran to the beginning of a new regional and global order.
Mojtaba Khamenei is not abandoning the ideological architecture of his predecessor. He is recasting it in a new vocabulary, with the people placed more explicitly at the center of the mission.
If this reading is correct, ba’sat is more than a religious flourish.
It may be the connecting term between the second and third leaders of the Islamic Republic: a word that preserves Ali Khamenei’s project of a new Islamic civilization while giving Mojtaba Khamenei a language of his own.
The result is not an ideological break. It is an effort to continue the same project with a sharper definition of the people’s role in it: not simply as supporters of the Islamic Republic, but as a people told they have been given a mission.
The interview was interrupted while Ghalibaf was explaining the mechanism for releasing Iranian assets abroad.
Video of the broadcast shows his remarks being cut off abruptly, followed by a black screen before the channel switched to other programming.
IRIB later said the interview would continue in a second installment on Wednesday, adding that this had been announced in an on-screen ticker at the end of the program.
Parliament says broadcaster gave no notice
In a statement, parliament's media office said the interview had been recorded more than two hours before broadcast and delivered in full to IRIB.
It said that if the broadcaster had decided not to air parts of the interview, it should have coordinated with parliament beforehand. Instead, it said, "The interview was stopped in the middle of its broadcast without any prior notice."
The statement said the cut section covered some of the most sensitive issues in the interview: possible IAEA inspections of Iranian nuclear sites, efforts to release frozen Iranian assets, the reported $300 billion reconstruction credit in the US-Iran MoU, responses to remarks by US President Donald Trump, and what it called Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei’s strategic message last month.
Video of missing segment circulates
Several Iranian media outlets later published what they described as a brief clip from the unaired portion of the interview.
In the footage, Ghalibaf defended the mechanism for releasing Iranian funds, saying critics ignored that similar humanitarian purchase arrangements had existed for years.
"Where were these purchases made over the past 15 years? Weren't the letters of credit opened in London?" Ghalibaf said.
"Why has this suddenly become an issue? Because they do not want to admit that this memorandum of understanding opened the way for OFAC authorization. This is the power of the Islamic Republic. Be proud of it and stand by it. This document is America's defeat, and we achieved it with dignity," he added.
Iranian media reported that about 20 minutes of the interview had not been aired.
Online speculation
Messages sent by viewers to Iran International suggested the interview was cut as Ghalibaf referred to an earlier agreement under late president Ebrahim Raisi that enabled about $6 billion in Iranian funds to be transferred from South Korea to Qatar for humanitarian purchases.
Other audience messages linked the interruption to reports that a senior IRIB executive had returned to the broadcaster after leaving following another controversial live broadcast last month.
During that program, hardline lawmaker Mahmoud Nabavian disclosed what he described as confidential correspondence from Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei criticizing the US-Iran negotiations before the interview was abruptly cut short. IRIB later said Nabavian's remarks had violated the law and announced the executive's departure.
Iranian news website Jamaran cited unnamed sources saying the executive had returned to work on Tuesday and raised questions about whether the personnel change was connected to the interruption of Ghalibaf's interview. No official has confirmed or denied the report.
Broader political divisions
The dispute over Ghalibaf's interview came amid growing signs of divisions within Iran's ruling establishment over the US-Iran memorandum of understanding.
Several Iranian media outlets portrayed the interruption as evidence of widening political rifts. Fararu said it reflected the growing influence within state broadcasting of allies of hardline politician Saeed Jalili and the ultraconservative Paydari Front, arguing that IRIB could no longer tolerate "even the official narrative of the conservative parliament speaker."
The outlet described the episode as "factional monopolization," "another crossed red line," and "media self-sabotage at one of the country's most sensitive political moments."
The controversy follows weeks of public infighting over negotiations with Washington. Hardline figures have repeatedly accused Ghalibaf, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, and President Masoud Pezeshkian of making excessive concessions, while Ghalibaf and his allies have defended the agreement and pushed back against the criticism.
“Unfortunately, some groups, in line with the psychological operations of hostile media, are trying to weaken this achievement by attacking the negotiating team and questioning national decisions,” he said.
He added that the memorandum of understanding was reached within the framework of the Islamic Republic’s broader policies and with the support of the Supreme National Security Council.
Pezeshkian made the comments during a meeting with members of the Society of Seminary Teachers of Qom, an influential body of senior Shi'ite clerics.
The remarks came as Pezeshkian’s government faced mounting pressure from ultraconservative factions over the memorandum of understanding with the United States.
In recent weeks, some hardline figures have accused the president and the negotiating team of making concessions and questioned whether key security decisions had the backing of the Supreme Leader.
The attacks have exposed divisions within Iran’s conservative camp, with some establishment-aligned conservatives pushing back against the most radical critics.
At Tuesday’s meeting, Society of Seminary Teachers of Qom Chairman Ayatollah Hashem Hosseini Bushehri voiced support for the negotiating team and said running the country under current conditions was difficult.
Other members of the group reportedly raised concerns including alleged violations of parts of the Iran-US memorandum of understanding, the need to explain the talks more clearly to the public.
The president insisted that Iran would not retreat from its national rights or core principles, adding that the dominant view in the Supreme National Security Council had been to use diplomacy to consolidate gains made on the battlefield and protect national interests.
Pezeshkian said his government had pursued negotiations from a position of “dignity, power and national interest” and would not give in to imposed demands.
He said the final text of the agreement with the US had been reviewed by expert and security bodies before receiving what he called firm backing from the Supreme National Security Council.
Pezeshkian also said much of his government’s capacity over the past two years had been spent managing crises.
“Over the past two years, a large part of the government’s management capacity has been spent on managing crises, reducing the effects of foreign pressure and preventing the consequences of these challenges from being transferred to people’s daily lives,” he said.
