Iran's new supreme leader Mojtaba Khamenei rules behind the scenes as Tehran weighs war and talks

Iran's new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, has ruled since succeeding his father in March without appearing in public or releasing audio, exercising power through written statements, decrees and a narrow circle of trusted officials, an Al Jazeera analysis published on 5 November says. The piece argues that four meetings announced within 11 days in October point to a decision-making system taking shape as Tehran weighs negotiations against renewed confrontation with the United States and Israel.

Ali Khamenei's nearly 37 years in power rested on visible personal presence: speeches setting red lines and public meetings with commanders, political elites and ordinary Iranians. His son came to power in different circumstances. Injured in the February 28 strike that killed his father, he was advised, according to sources close to him quoted by Reuters, not to appear or release audio recordings for fear of being tracked.

His rule has taken shape through decrees rebuilding institutions and through appointments after military and security commanders were killed in the war. In August he named his military adviser, Mohsen Rezaei, as his representative on the Supreme National Security Council; Rezaei later became its secretary. Six military appointments followed, including Ali Abdollahi as chief of the Armed Forces General Staff, Ahmad Vahidi as commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Ali Azmaei as IRGC Navy commander. Abdollahi was also instructed to complete the merger of the General Staff with Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters.

Meetings announced in May and August — two of them with President Masoud Pezeshkian — served mainly to reassure Iranians that the new leader was alive and performing his duties. At his first reported meeting with the reconstituted military leadership, announced on October 31, Abdollahi, army commander Amir Hatami and Vahidi reportedly briefed him on military readiness in the Gulf, the Strait of Hormuz and the Sea of Oman.

Those consultations ran alongside intensive mediation. On October 20, Pakistan's army chief, Field Marshal Asim Munir, carried a Qatari-Pakistani compromise to Tehran that, according to Arab media reports, offered unannounced inspections of nuclear facilities in exchange for Iran receiving interest on frozen funds held in Qatar; Khamenei's meeting with chief negotiator Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf was announced the next day. On October 26, Munir returned with Saudi Defence Minister Prince Khalid bin Salman Al Saud and Turkish intelligence chief Ibrahim Kalin, and Rezaei — who had received a letter from US Vice President JD Vance — announced that Tehran had sent Washington a proposal on the Strait of Hormuz with a seven-day deadline. On October 30, Qatari mediators held 12 hours of talks in Tehran, coordinated with the White House, after US envoy Tom Barrack said an initial understanding was close.

The statements issued after the meetings carried two messages: insistence on Iran's conditions for ending the war, and instructions to commanders to retaliate immediately against any threat without geographical limits, with an expanded list of US and Israeli targets. The analysis reads the meetings as defining the outer limits of Iran's options rather than settling on a course, and compares them with the consultations before the July 14, 2015 nuclear agreement — noting that those talks lasted about two years under sanctions, while this round was compressed into 11 days amid armed confrontation, a naval blockade and the US midterm elections of November 3.

Washington wants nuclear concessions before negotiations resume; Tehran wants the naval blockade lifted, frozen assets released and oil exports restored. The analysis concludes that the decision-making machinery appears to be in place and functioning, but that the legitimacy of decisions remains tied to the legitimacy of a leader whose presence can be established only through others.

Source: Al Jazeera.