(SeaPRwire) – By: Julian Holbrooke
Iran’s ruling system now runs on a ghost. No verified video of Mojtaba Khamenei exists. No public audio recordings bear his voice. No confirmed logs show regular in-person meetings with top officials. He is the official supreme leader, named to succeed his father Ali Khamenei. Yet every faction inside the Islamist power structure wields his name like a club. They use it to beat rivals and cement their own grip on resources. This is not a functioning state. It is an oligarchic clan network propped up by borrowed authority. The cracks in that facade are starting to split wide open.
The public fight spilled into view via two reports from Iran International. The first centers on a claim from senior cleric Mohammad-Bagher Kharrazi. Kharrazi is a relative of the Khamenei family by marriage. He says President Masoud Pezeshkian has repeatedly threatened to resign. He quotes Mojtaba Khamenei as saying, “If he resigns one more time, I will approve it.” Pezeshkian’s office has fiercely denied the account. Mehdi Tabatabaei, the president’s communications deputy, calls the allegation baseless and an outright lie. A second presidential advisor says Kharrazi has no contact with the supreme leader. He adds Kharrazi is known for telling “strange stories.” Hours later, Iran International published a second report. It claims Pezeshkian met Mojtaba only once, in a tinted-window car at an undisclosed Tehran location. Unnamed sources say the meeting lasted several minutes. The two men could not see each other. Pezeshkian was not permitted to shake Khamenei’s hand. The report says Pezeshkian later questioned if the voice he heard was real. Pezeshkian has given a very different account publicly. He says he spent roughly two and a half hours with Khamenei in a cordial atmosphere. None of the Iran International claims have been independently verified. Iranian officials have offered conflicting accounts of how often senior figures meet Mojtaba.
These competing stories have nothing to do with the truth of Mojtaba’s status. They are weapons in a raw battle for power and economic control. Kasra Aarabi directs IRGC research at United Against Nuclear Iran. He describes Iran’s ruling structure as an “Islamist oligarchic mafia system.” Under Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader acted as the system’s “godfather.” He arbitrated disputes between rival Islamist factions. He guaranteed each faction access to power and money. His death left a power vacuum that Mojtaba’s appointment was meant to fill. But Mojtaba’s prolonged public absence has left factions adrift. No one is sure who actually holds final authority. Factional fights do not turn on ideological differences. They turn on control of state contracts, oil revenues, and security apparatus budgets. Each side invokes Mojtaba’s name to legitimize its own demands. They use it to constrain rivals, or justify decisions with no clear source. Exiled Iranian journalist Mehdi Ghadimi frames the resignation rumors as a familiar tactic. He says reformist administrations have used the playbook for decades. When a reformist president feels his usefulness to the supreme leader is ending, his allies spread resignation rumors. The rumors build public sympathy before he is pushed aside. Similar rumors surrounded former presidents Mohammad Khatami and Hassan Rouhani. Reformist media keep pushing the claims even after official denials. This lets officials later portray themselves as having challenged the supreme leader. Ghadimi goes further than Aarabi on Mojtaba’s status. He says no functioning person by that name can think, speak, or make decisions. Mojtaba is either dead, or kept alive in a severely deteriorated, unstable condition.
The geopolitical pendulum for Iran’s ruling class is swinging toward fragmentation. Aarabi warns the tactic of invoking Mojtaba’s name has a clear expiration date. No group can keep citing a leader with no proof of life indefinitely. The longer Mojtaba stays out of public view, the more doubt will spread about his existence. That doubt will fuel more intense infighting between oligarchic clans. Each faction will grow bolder in grabbing as much power and wealth as it can. The system’s fragile unity, held together only by a ghost’s name, will fray faster with every new competing claim. Regional powers already adjusting to Iran’s internal chaos will accelerate their hedging strategies.
Author bio: Julian Holbrooke, an international relations analyst and regular contributor to leading European daily newspapers, focuses on Middle Eastern power dynamics.