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Iran’s rival political factions are increasingly invoking the authority of Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei to attack their opponents and protect their own positions, even as questions persist over whether he is actively governing the country, according to an Iran expert.
The internal struggle surfaced in two reports published by Iran International concerning Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian’s relationship with the new supreme leader.
In the first report, senior cleric Mohammad-Bagher Kharrazi, a relative of the Khamenei family by marriage, claimed Pezeshkian had repeatedly threatened to resign and was warned that his next resignation would be accepted.
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Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian speaks with Fox News Channel’s Martha MacCallum during an interview on Sept. 25, 2025, in New York City. (John Lamparski/Getty Images)
“If he resigns one more time, I will approve it,” Kharrazi quoted Khamenei as saying.
Pezeshkian’s office strongly denied the account. Mehdi Tabatabaei, the president’s deputy for communications and information, called the allegation “baseless and an outright lie,” while another presidential advisor said Kharrazi had no contact with the supreme leader and was known for telling “strange stories.”
Hours later, Iran International published a second report alleging Pezeshkian had met Mojtaba Khamenei only once, inside a vehicle with tinted windows at an undisclosed location in Tehran.
According to the outlet’s unnamed sources, the encounter lasted several minutes, the two men could not see each other and Pezeshkian was not permitted to shake Khamenei’s hand. The report alleged that the president later questioned whether the voice he heard had actually belonged to the supreme leader.
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Masoud Pezeshkian, then a presidential candidate, waves as he arrives to vote at a polling station in Shahr-e-Qods near Tehran, Iran, on July 5, 2024. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
The claims have not been independently verified. Pezeshkian previously described a substantially different encounter, saying publicly that he had spent approximately two and a half hours with Khamenei in a cordial atmosphere.
Kasra Aarabi, director of IRGC research at United Against Nuclear Iran, said the competing claims surrounding Pezeshkian and Mojtaba Khamenei reflected a deeper struggle inside what he described as an “Islamist oligarchic mafia system.”
Under Ali Khamenei, Aarabi said, the supreme leader functioned as the system’s “godfather,” arbitrating among rival Islamist factions and guaranteeing their access to power and money. His removal created a vacuum that Mojtaba Khamenei’s appointment was intended to fill, but the new supreme leader’s prolonged public absence has left rival factions uncertain about who is actually in charge.
“The very essence of this mafia system is built on a godfather,” Aarabi said. “If the godfather is absent, whether because he is severely incapacitated or nonexistent, that vacuum… re-emerges between the various Islamist oligarchic clans.”
Aarabi said those factions are not primarily divided by ideology.
“They’re not competing over ideology,” he said. “They’re competing over raw power and economic interests.”
In that environment, Aarabi said, Mojtaba Khamenei’s name has become a political instrument that competing factions can invoke to legitimize themselves, constrain their rivals or justify decisions whose true source remains unclear.
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People hold placards with an image of Iran’s new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, and the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, during a rally in Tehran, Iran, March 9, 2026. (Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) Via Reuters)
“Mojtaba’s name is the glue that’s holding the system together right now,” Aarabi said. “Each of these clans invokes his name to justify its existence, legitimize its position, and consolidate its place within this fragile system.”
Exiled Iranian journalist Mehdi Ghadimi described the resignation claims as part of a recurring political strategy used by reformist administrations.
“This is a familiar cycle,” Ghadimi said. “Whenever they feel that their usefulness to the supreme leader has come to an end, they start circulating these resignation rumors in an effort to build public sympathy and improve their image before being pushed aside.”
Ghadimi said similar rumors surrounded former presidents Mohammad Khatami and Hassan Rouhani during the final years of their administrations. He argued that reformist-aligned media channels often continue circulating resignation claims even after a president’s office formally denies them, allowing officials later to portray themselves as having challenged the supreme leader.
On Mojtaba Khamenei’s status, Ghadimi went further than Aarabi, saying he did not believe there was “a functioning person by that name who is capable of thinking, making decisions or speaking.”
“Either he is dead, or he is being kept alive in an extremely unstable and severely deteriorated condition,” Ghadimi said.
Aarabi said the two reports illustrate that dynamic. A cleric opposed to or unaligned with Pezeshkian invoked Mojtaba Khamenei’s authority to weaken the president by claiming his next resignation would be accepted, while figures around Pezeshkian pushed back with an account portraying the president as having met directly with the supreme leader.
Mojtaba Khamenei has not appeared in any publicly released video or audio recording since succeeding his father, according to Iran International. Iranian officials have offered conflicting accounts about how often senior government figures have met him.
Aarabi cautioned that using Khamenei’s name as a source of authority will become increasingly difficult if his public absence continues.
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A composite image shows several Iranian leaders named in the State Department’s Rewards for Justice program offering up to $10 million for information on key figures tied to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), including Mojtaba Khamenei, top left. (State Department/Rewards for Justice; Khoshiran/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images)
“There’s only so many times you can use someone’s name without any proof of life that they actually exist,” Aarabi said. “The longer Mojtaba is absent, the more questions develop over whether he is alive or able. And as soon as that doubt increases, you will see this infighting increase.”
Efrat (Effie) Lachter is a reporter for Fox News Digital with more than 15 years of experience covering conflict, global affairs, human rights and political accountability. She has directed and produced more than 200 documentary segments across more than 40 countries, documenting conflicts, humanitarian crises, corruption, human trafficking, gender-based violence and the human stories behind major world events.
Lachter’s reporting has taken her into conflict zones and crisis areas across the Middle East, Europe, Asia and Africa. Her work has included uncovering human trafficking networks, revealing an ISIS underground torture prison in Syria, documenting the war in Ukraine and interviewing senior political figures and world leaders. She was also among the Western journalists who entered Russia after the war began to bring testimonies from Putin’s opposition. Lachter is the recipient of the 2022 Peres Center for Peace Award and was a 2023–2024 Knight-Wallace Journalism Fellow at the University of Michigan. She also won two Rockower Awards for Excellence in Reporting. She holds a bachelor’s degree in communication and a master’s degree in political science.
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