Confirmation that Iran’s new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, was wounded in the first wave of Israeli strikes underlines how desperate the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (ICRG) was to ensure its wounded pick was elevated to senior office, and how confident it is that the wartime machinery can operate almost on autopilot without him.
The full extent of Khamenei’s injuries and the speed of his recovery are still unclear, but a broken leg and facial injuries are the bare minimum. This is not a medical bulletin that the authorities want to dwell on, although Ali Larijani, secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, chose his words carefully when saying that “his condition has not been reported as critical,” a phrase that suggests he has not seen him in person.
In an attempt to demonstrate that the government was operating in accordance with its constitution, he added: “Despite this incident, he continues to provide authoritative guidance and supervision of operations, and all actions and attacks are carried out with his permission and direct orders.”
But it now appears that part of the delay around his election was not just a technical issue of assembling in wartime the assembly of experts, the body of 88 clerics who elect the Supreme Leader, but also over doubts about Khamenei’s ability and willingness to take on the job.
That he could have survived the attack on the supreme leader’s office completely unscathed seemed implausible given that his father, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, his mother, his wife Zahra Haddad-Adel and one of his children had also been killed. He also lost his sister, brother-in-law and a niece. His mother died three days after the attack from her injuries. The entire office of the supreme leader was incinerated. At the very least, it would have left an indelible emotional, if not physical, mark.
Opposition groups in the diaspora have claimed that Khamenei is in a coma and is being treated in great secrecy in hospital, ignoring both his rise to the position of supreme leader and the devastating damage suffered by his family.
The failure of the government’s communications machinery to publish a single photograph, video or even text of Mojtaba three days after his accession led to the inevitable speculation that the Assembly of Experts, consciously or unconsciously, had chosen a corpse or a cardboard cutout to govern the country.
The Israeli Foreign Ministry had few doubts about his health and printed a cardboard cutout of him along with the caption: “You can run, you can hide, but cardboard regimes fold.”
The lack of a public appearance or even a sound recording undermined the sense of continuity generated by his election and led to claims on social media that the IRGC had knowingly pressured a dead man’s candidacy. Not even the feeling that their hideout needed to be protected from Israeli bombs seemed like a sufficient explanation.
An Iranian journalist insisted: “The leader of Iran can lead without appearing in public. It is not necessary for him to be on the street or in a religious center. The important point is the management of the country.”
Loyalists posted a photograph of him that may have been generated by AI and claimed that he had chaired a meeting of top IRGC commanders.
The handling of the episode was all the more strange that, even though the Iranian media was heavily censored, they began to speculate about the well-being of their silent new leader.
On Tuesday, local Iranian media asked Esmail Baghaei, spokesman for Iran’s Foreign Ministry, whether Khamenei had taken charge and assumed his new role as the country’s top religious and political figure and commander-in-chief of the armed forces. Baghaei avoided a direct answer, saying: “Those who have to receive the message have received the message.”
Instead, confirmation that he was injured came almost in passing in a telegram from Yousef Pezeshkian, the president’s temperamentally outspoken son, in which, along with a passing reference to news reports about the snow in Tehran, he revealed that he had heard that Mojtaba had been injured but that he was healthy and there was no problem.
Inevitably, Mojtaba’s appointment, already denounced by regime opponents, including some in Evin prison, as a disgraceful IRGC puppet show, will be seen as a sign that they were desperate to install their man, regardless of his health. The IRGC is not just an army, it is a business empire with investments spread throughout the economy.
Maryam Alemzadeh, associate professor of Iranian history and politics at St Antony’s College, Oxford, argues that the system is robust and has been intentionally designed to have easily replaceable leadership.
“Resilience has been based on this semi-formal network of IRGC, Basij and other state services that have fulfilled multiple functions, including service delivery, surveillance and repression. Decapitation does almost nothing to affect this network. If anything, it creates a limited demonstration around the flag effect among this particular group, but not among the general population,” Alemzadeh said.
Alex Vatanka, a senior researcher at the Middle East Institute, said it could still take up to four years for Khamenei, at 56, to establish himself personally, just as his own father was fighting for authority from the start. “The office doesn’t give you power. It’s the personality of the office occupant. It takes time.”
Overall, military strategy has been set, and the conduct of the war is on autopilot, to try to maximize the external economic costs for Iran’s opponents by conducting an asymmetric war in which there are no limits. Today, Iran does not need a new leader (dead, alive or wounded) to upgrade the IRGC’s target base. Instead, you can watch Donald Trump go crazy daily explaining what he’s trying to accomplish. What will matter most is whether you are needed to help decide if and when the conflict can end. But for the moment, if there is a country in this war that has no direction, it is not Iran.
