Iran analyst
Mojtaba Khamenei has not been seen or heard publicly, leaving his condition and circumstances unclear as officials govern in his name, interpret messages attributed to him and invoke his authority on questions ranging from negotiations with Washington to the conduct of the war.
Khamenei’s absence from public view has not stopped competing factions from claiming his backing. Written messages attributed to him, some open to competing interpretations, have provided material for both advocates and opponents of negotiations. But the competition to define what the supreme leader wants is not necessarily an equal one.
In wartime, military and security institutions have greater power than advocates of compromise to turn their interpretation of his wishes into action. Senior commanders occupy key decision-making positions, control the forces conducting the war and repeatedly invoke the leader’s authority in explaining military and political choices.
That imbalance has given hawkish figures greater room to portray Mojtaba as opposed to compromise, even though messages attributed to him have both permitted negotiations and called for retribution.
Iran’s leader is not only central to decisions on war and peace but also, as commander-in-chief of the armed forces, at the center of the country’s power structure during crises.
The Iran-Iraq war and last year’s 12-day war with Israel and the United States demonstrated how the supreme leader’s role extends beyond military command to political cohesion, public mobilization and connecting decisions on the battlefield with society.
Mojtaba’s absence from public view has raised a different question: how supreme authority is exercised during a war when the leader himself is neither seen nor heard.
Written messages attributed to Mojtaba, alongside repeated references by officials to his views and wishes, have become a means of asserting his authority over decisions and maintaining cohesion among supporters of the Islamic Republic.
They also turn the leader’s name into a source of authority under which costly decisions can be pursued, even as responsibility for implementing them and their consequences is dispersed across the political and military establishment.
Authority without a public appearance
Mojtaba has not appeared at major political, state or personal events, including the funeral of his wife and the large funeral ceremonies for his father.
His absence has produced conflicting accounts about his health, ranging from assertions that he is completely healthy to reports that he was injured or lost a limb, creating uncertainty around a leader whose name remains central to decision-making.
Security concerns have been offered as the principal explanation for keeping him out of public view.
“Security experts have strongly advised him not to reveal himself, even through the release of his voice, let alone an image,” Mohammad-Hossein Khoshvaght, secretary of the Fararu website, said.
Hamshahri newspaper has similarly argued that releasing an audio recording could make it possible to extract some of the speaker’s physical and physiological characteristics.
The secrecy prevents an independent assessment of Mojtaba’s health, his ability to address the public or his positions on major issues. It also allows multiple officials to speak for him and attribute decisions to his authority without the leader publicly clarifying his own position.
Ambiguous message divides officials over talks
A written message attributed to Mojtaba showed how that system can produce competing interpretations.
The message used the Persian expression “Al al-osul,” broadly meaning “in principle,” in discussing negotiations, while leaving responsibility with President Masoud Pezeshkian and effectively permitting an agreement to be signed.
The wording quickly became the subject of competing interpretations among figures presenting themselves as familiar with the leader’s position.
“Some people have interpreted the phrase ‘in principle, I had a different view’ to mean that the supreme leader is fundamentally opposed to negotiations, whereas this interpretation is incorrect and does not correspond with the existing realities,” the Revolutionary Guards’ political deputy said.
Mohsen Rezaei, the new secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, offered a different interpretation.
“When the leader says, ‘in principle, I had a different view,’ it means the path he had in mind was better than the path taken by the Supreme National Security Council,” Rezaei said.
The disagreement allows one camp to present the message as opposition to negotiations and another to read it as conditional approval.
Without a public appearance or unequivocal order from Mojtaba himself, such ambiguity diffuses responsibility for policy while giving greater room to institutions with the organizational and coercive power to make their interpretation prevail.
In practice, that can favor figures who view continued war as the necessary course and promote a message of a “powerful Iran,” using the prospect of continuing conflict as leverage against the United States and Israel.
Military network invokes Khamenei’s ‘authority’
Mojtaba’s physical absence has not meant an absence of authority. Instead, officials across the military and political establishment repeatedly invoke his name to validate policy.
Ebrahim Jabbari, an adviser to the Revolutionary Guards commander, has spoken of Mojtaba’s “command and oversight” of military affairs and his management of expert meetings involving the armed forces, presenting him as directly engaged in running the country’s defense establishment.
Such accounts allow difficult military and political decisions to be presented as products of the absent leader’s orders and judgment even when no public directive has been issued.
Khoshvaght has described Mojtaba’s selection as a decision made by the political system itself, reflecting a network of authority that has increasingly operated without transparent lines of responsibility.
Iran’s adversaries have, in a different way, reinforced the portrayal of Mojtaba as the ultimate decision-maker. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said Mojtaba is alive, while US President Donald Trump has described him as “definitely, 100 percent” involved in negotiations between Tehran and Washington and has raised the prospect of meeting him.
Those remarks allow supporters to depict Mojtaba as a leader recognized by Iran’s adversaries and standing against them, while officials around him present “resistance” and readiness for further war as expressions of Iranian power.
Command appointments strengthen war camp
The combination of an absent leader and decisions made largely through military and security institutions has blurred responsibility for Iran’s political and wartime choices.
Successes can be attributed to the judgment of the leader, while the human and economic costs are dispersed across a network of institutions and officials. Ambiguous messages can meanwhile be interpreted by rival factions to support their preferred policies.
That balance gives greater weight to military figures such as Revolutionary Guards Aerospace Force commander Majid Mousavi, whose forces carry a major share of the fighting and who has called on officials to follow the leader’s wishes.
Precisely what those wishes entail remains unclear. The same leader who permitted negotiations and an agreement has also promised retribution, leaving commanders considerable scope to determine which message takes precedence.
Recent command appointments made in Mojtaba’s name form part of the same shift. While some consolidated the existing structure, comments by Mohammad-Reza Naghdi, an adviser to Iran’s supreme leader and the Revolutionary Guards, indicated that the objective was to move Iran’s military posture from defensive to offensive.
Rezaei’s appointment to lead the Supreme National Security Council adds another military figure to a central decision-making position. He has spoken against compromise with Washington and raised the possibility of changing Iran’s nuclear doctrine.
Together, the appointments and increasingly assertive rhetoric from military figures have strengthened the camp arguing against accommodation and in favor of a more offensive posture.
War policy takes shape without public order
Iran’s current war policy is therefore taking shape without a single, unambiguous public command from its supreme leader. Instead, it is emerging through written messages open to interpretation, appointments, calls for retribution and a shrinking political space for those advocating accommodation.
Media outlets close to the leadership have given little room to arguments for accommodation, while senior figures increasingly speak of retaliation, confrontation and obedience to the leader.
Mojtaba remains physically absent but politically ubiquitous, his name appearing beneath written messages and in the statements of officials who interpret his wishes.
The result is a system in which the supreme leader’s authority remains central even as his own voice is absent – giving a pro-war camp already strongly represented across military, security, political and media institutions greater room to define what he wants and, through that interpretation, shape the direction of the war.
In a message to IRIB chief Peyman Jebelli, Vahidi described the broadcaster’s performance as a “valuable effort” and “effective role-playing,” saying it had made an important contribution to strengthening the Islamic Republic’s “media front” during the conflict.
Vahidi’s endorsement comes against the backdrop of a broader power struggle between Pezeshkian and senior Guards commanders. Iran International reported in April, citing sources close to the presidential office, that Pezeshkian had accused Vahidi and other senior IRGC commanders of acting unilaterally during the war, undermining ceasefire prospects and pushing Iran toward economic disaster.
Pezeshkian has also repeatedly criticized IRIB. In May, he said the broadcaster presented an unrealistic picture of conditions in the country and needed a serious overhaul.
The confrontation escalated in July when Pezeshkian’s office accused IRIB of censoring part of a televised interview in which the president said the late Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei had privately instructed officials to negotiate with the United States despite publicly ruling out talks. The broadcaster did not publicly explain why the remarks were omitted.
Ghalibaf interview also cut
Ghalibaf has had his own clashes with the broadcaster. In July, parliament accused IRIB of censorship after it abruptly cut short a pre-recorded interview with the speaker as he discussed the release of Iranian assets abroad.
Parliament said roughly 20 minutes covering politically sensitive issues had not been aired, including possible IAEA inspections, frozen Iranian assets, the reported $300 billion reconstruction credit in the US-Iran memorandum of understanding and Ghalibaf’s response to President Donald Trump.
IRIB said the interview had been divided into two installments, but parliament said it had received no advance notice that parts would be withheld.
This week, Ghalibaf renewed his criticism, saying IRIB had failed to achieve the necessary results in “cognitive warfare” and referring to what he called the broadcaster’s “structural, approach and performance inefficiencies.”
The push is coming from figures with real leverage, including inside the judiciary, and it has two aims: harsher enforcement of the dress code now, and an end to the suspension of Iran's strict Hijab and Chastity law.
Tehran Prosecutor Ali Salehi said on Monday the judiciary was preparing to move against cafes, restaurants and clothing stores for "committing acts contrary to public chastity and selling unconventional clothing."
On Thursday he went further, ordering judicial authorities to identify and confront what he called "organized and networked actors" promoting unveiling, whom he accused of spreading corruption in public places and offending public sentiment.
The closures were already underway. In recent weeks authorities have shut cafes, restaurants, shops and sports clubs in more than 15 cities, including Tehran, over hijab violations by customers or staff.
Women have also been blocked from obtaining motorcycle licenses, despite a government decision sent to police in February.
The reformist daily Shargh wrote on Wednesday that the resistance appeared to have little to do with law or road safety, and everything to do with what women would be wearing on the bikes.
'Hijab is a flag'
The pressure is louder on the street and online than in the institutions.
Hijab has moved to the front of the placards and slogans at the nightly pro-government rallies, according to social media users who follow them. Those gatherings drew some unveiled women in the early weeks of the war. They are far smaller now, and the crowd is almost entirely hardline.
Their target is often President Masoud Pezeshkian, who has not submitted the Hijab and Chastity law to government bodies for implementation, and whom demonstrators accuse of letting unveiled women multiply.
Pezeshkian has not objected to the law itself. The decision to freeze it was taken above him, out of fear that enforcing it would set off a new wave of anti-government protests.
Female hardliners have held their own gatherings in cities including Isfahan and Mashhad. Outside the governor's office in Isfahan, one placard carried a line attributed to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: "Unveiled women are our free soldiers."
Online, hardliners have been circulating footage of women walking, exercising, dancing and singing in shopping centers, cafes and streets, demanding that the authorities act against women they call "naked."
"Do you see the widespread wave of hijab tweets? The message is completely clear: the authorities have made up their minds to put an end to this situation. I can't wait for the operational phase to begin as soon as possible," one hardline user wrote.
The argument they make for themselves is that the veil is not a rule but a banner. "Hijab is the flag of the Islamic Republic and must not be allowed to fall," runs a common formulation.
"Hijab is not merely a secondary religious ruling; hijab is a flag," a hardline cleric posted. "If there is leniency over it, it will lead to the destruction of the family and the weakening of other religious laws." His patience, he warned, and that of others like him, could run out.
Other users have been keeping score. One noted that the same voices who spent the war demanding control of the Strait of Hormuz, guaranteed revenues from the waterway and a seat at the table of global oil pricing had "returned to factory settings," their attention back on women’s clothing.
A law too dangerous to use
The Hijab and Chastity law, finalized in 2024, is harsher than anything before it, and includes provisions that would let civilian groups confront women over their clothing.
It has never been enforced. Implementation was suspended over fears it would set off protests on the scale of those that followed Mahsa Amini's death, and the Supreme National Security Council's decision still stands.
The freeze carries the late supreme leader's authority. Interior Ministry spokesman Ali Zeynivand said this month that it was decided under Ali Khamenei and has not changed, and that Pezeshkian, too, supports it.
Meanwhile, the streets have moved. Unveiled women are far more visible than a year ago, and many now dress in ways that would have been unthinkable in public not long before.
Women's rights activists warn against reading that as the end of compulsory hijab. Women employed in government offices and institutions are still held to the dress code, and unveiled women are still turned away from some buildings and services unless they cover their hair, arms and legs.
Some users see the easing as a product of the war rather than a change of policy, and expect it to end with the fighting. "If the situation becomes more stable, I doubt the authorities will refrain from bringing their repressive forces back onto the streets to enforce hijab on women," one wrote.
Even among those who support compulsory hijab, some think a crackdown now would backfire. Morteza Panahian, a young cleric who has also criticized the refusal to license women motorcyclists, wrote that anyone blaming the spread of unveiling on the law's suspension had evidently never read the law.
"This law is so impossible to implement that, if it is promulgated, the pace of unveiling will double," he wrote.
