After months of silence, the Islamic Republic finally released footage of its elusive supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei. The clip was less than 15 seconds long. It was undated, its location undisclosed, and officials immediately promised that additional footage would be released in the future.
How sacred and holy is your leader if, before releasing proof that he is alive, you first have to announce that the proof is coming?
Since Mojtaba Khamenei was appointed supreme leader in March, he has not delivered a live public speech. Statements have appeared under his name, speeches have been read on his behalf, and officials have repeatedly assured the public that he remains active. Yet Iranians have barely seen him or heard his voice.
Even President Masoud Pezeshkian has offered contradictory descriptions of his access to the supreme leader. At one point, he suggested their interactions were increasing. Later, he admitted that communication with Khamenei was “very difficult.”
Many Iranians therefore believe Mojtaba was killed or left incapacitated during the war. Can you blame them? For months, the closest thing the Islamic Republic had to a visible leader was a cardboard cutout of Mojtaba and state-organized marches attended by government employees and regime loyalists. His portrait appeared more often than he did.
Now, one short, undated video is supposed to end every question. But the question is no longer simply whether Mojtaba is alive. It is who is actually governing Iran, who is issuing orders in his name, and how long a regime can survive when even the condition of its highest authority has become a matter of speculation.
Authoritarian regimes do not always collapse in one dramatic moment. Sometimes they crumble gradually.
They crumble when officials contradict one another because no one knows who has the final word. When institutions continue operating but nobody can explain who directs them. When the Revolutionary Guards appear more powerful than the government, statements replace speeches, and obedience depends on fear rather than trust.
The machinery can continue operating. Orders can still be issued. Prisoners can still be executed and protesters arrested. But repression is not leadership, and survival is not stability.
The Islamic Republic built its political structure around the supreme leader as the ultimate authority: commander in chief, final decision-maker, and the figure standing above the elected government. If that man cannot appear, speak, or demonstrate that he is exercising power, the regime faces more than a public-relations problem. It faces a crisis at the center of its political system.
The longer Mojtaba remains absent, the more plausible it becomes that others are ruling behind the curtain. The IRGC, senior clerics, intelligence officials, and competing political factions may continue using his name, but every statement attributed to an invisible leader raises another question: Who actually holds power?
HEADING
Iran, however, is not leaderless. The Islamic Republic is. Long before the father and son were separated by war, many Iranians had stopped seeing either as legitimate leaders.
A title does not create leadership. Neither does a clerical council, an official portrait, or a state television announcement. Leadership cannot simply be imposed from above while the consent of the people is treated as irrelevant.
And many Iranians have already named the person they want. People outside Iran can dislike their choice. They can disagree with it, dismiss it, or avoid mentioning his name. But Iranians have risked their freedom and lives to call for him.
During the January uprising, protesters chanted his name in the streets. Some wrote it on walls. Others were arrested and imprisoned for supporting him.
The name they called was Reza Pahlavi.
The true number killed during the crackdown of January 8 and 9 remains impossible to verify because the regime imposed an Internet blackout and restricted access to information. Iranian authorities acknowledged that thousands died. Other reports, including accounts based on health officials and purported government documents, have estimated that more than 30,000 may have been killed.
They were not all killed for calling one man’s name. But many were killed while demanding the end of the Islamic Republic, and support for Pahlavi was undeniably part of that uprising.
Reza Pahlavi has spent much of his life presenting another vision of Iran, one connected to its history, art, cultural identity, and freedom. He speaks of an Iran that is not a prison and of a nation that does not exist merely to serve an ideology or finance permanent war.
The West does not get to appoint Iran’s next leader. But neither should it erase the choice expressed by Iranians because that choice is politically inconvenient. Those of us outside Iran have a simpler responsibility: to listen.
Iranians are the ones who have lived under the Islamic Republic and the IRGC for nearly five decades. They face surveillance, imprisonment, torture, sexual violence, and execution. Their lives are endangered when they speak. They deserve to be heard, not gaslit.
For decades, the Islamic Republic has worked to persuade the outside world that the regime’s version of Iran matters more than the voices of Iranians themselves.
Perhaps that propaganda worked too well. Today, “leader” has become a title that apparently requires neither public trust nor public consent. A man can rule without appearing before his country. He can speak without using his own voice. He can issue orders through statements delivered by others.
Apparently, he does not even have to be visibly alive or conscious. But a system built around one supreme figure cannot indefinitely survive that figure’s disappearance.
When authority becomes anonymous, loyalty becomes transactional. When succession becomes theater, factions begin preparing for what comes next. And when citizens stop believing the official story, every new piece of propaganda becomes evidence of weakness rather than strength.
The Islamic Republic still possesses weapons, prisons, and execution chambers. But it is losing the one thing no regime can manufacture forever: legitimacy.
Mojtaba Khamenei has the title. Reza Pahlavi has a name people are willing to chant despite the bullets. The Islamic Republic’s leader cannot be found. The Iranian people’s choice has been visible all along.
Iran is not collapsing. The regime occupying it is crumbling.
The author is an Iran analyst at the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs.