Iran’s Invisible Supreme Leader: What Happened to Mojtaba Khamenei and Who Is Really Running the Country

The power vacuum and IRGC ascendancy

• No single decision-maker: Reuters reported on April 28 that Iran “no longer has a single, undisputed clerical arbiter at the pinnacle of power” and that “Mojtaba’s role is now one of endorsement rather than authority” . The New York Times likewise described a “new form of collective leadership” with more power flowing to IRGC generals .
• The IRGC’s “war council”: The IRGC has established a de facto war council that dictates military strategy and operations. Security and military leaders now effectively decide Iran’s war policy and negotiating posture . Analysts describe this as the IRGC consolidating control by necessity — not an accident of the power vacuum but the mechanism by which the Guards are taking over .
• Mojtaba as a figurehead: He was selected under direct military pressure from the IRGC, bypassing the normal constitutional process, and lacks the religious credentials, public legitimacy, and — by all available evidence — the physical capacity to actually rule .

Who is governing Iran today?

The most accurate description is a de facto IRGC-led collective leadership with the following characteristics:

• The IRGC’s senior commanders — particularly from the war council — control military operations, nuclear posture, and the terms of any negotiation with the US .
• Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei serves as a symbolic endorser of decisions made by others, communicating only through written statements or mediated messages . His first official “address” was a statement read on state TV with no video or audio of him; many Iranians expressed doubt it was even his message .
• President Pezeshkian is increasingly sidelined. His acknowledgment of difficulty reaching the leader and the contradictory trajectory of his own statements (first “interaction is increasing,” then “very difficult”) point to a fractured and opaque decision-making process .
• Iranian diplomacy (including US-Iran negotiations) is being conducted without a clear, visible, single authority, which analysts say may harden Tehran’s negotiating stance by empowering the most hardline military elements .

Bottom line

Mojtaba Khamenei is almost certainly alive but severely incapacitated — whether from unhealed combat wounds, a secondary health crisis, or both. The Islamic Republic remains functional, but it is now governed collectively by IRGC commanders and security hardliners, with the supreme leader reduced to a ceremonial figurehead whose signature is still sought on paper but whose physical presence has not been verified in over five months.