Is Mojtaba Khamenei Dead? The Silence From Tehran Is Deafening -By Kimia Shahsvari

Something is very wrong in Tehran. And the world deserves to say it plainly.

Since his father, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was killed in the US-Israeli strikes of February 28, Iran’s newly appointed Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei has not been seen publicly even once. Not on camera. Not on audio. The New York Times reported, citing various officials, that Mojtaba was wounded in his legs on the very same opening day of strikes that killed his father. That was over two weeks ago. We have heard nothing from the man directly since.

When Mojtaba’s “first message” as Supreme Leader finally came yesterday, it raised more questions than it answered. The written statement: containing no video or audio, was read aloud by a state television anchor and according to Media Line, the text contained numerous errors in typography and clerical language. A knowledgeable source in Tehran stated it had been dictated by the IRGC and released under Mojtaba’s name. To make matters worse, the statement reportedly used the Arabic calendar rather than Iran’s standard Solar Hijri calendar, an elementary error no functioning Supreme Leader’s office should make.

This is not the behaviour of a man in power. This is the behaviour of a regime in damage control.

US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth made it explicit. Hegseth said Mojtaba Khamenei is “wounded and likely disfigured,” adding: “His father: dead, he’s scared, he’s injured, he’s on the run and he lacks legitimacy… Who’s in charge? Iran may not even know.” When the Pentagon is openly questioning whether the new Supreme Leader of a nuclear-aspiring state is even functional, we should listen.

None of this should entirely surprise students of the Islamic Republic. Mojtaba’s father perfected the art of strategic disappearance. Across the defining protest waves of 2009, 2019, and 2022, the public record shows that when Khamenei went silent, it was always calculated – and when he did speak, the cost of dissent rose sharply. During the brutal crackdown that followed the late 2025 protests, Khamenei remained largely out of sight, even as thousands were being killed. Going dark is a regime tactic. But there is a difference between choosing silence and having silence chosen for you.

But here is the harder truth, and it is one that Iran’s opposition movement must internalise: it does not ultimately matter whether Mojtaba Khamenei is dead, disfigured, or dictating from a hospital bed. The Islamic Republic is not built on a person. It is built on an ideology, on Velayat-e Faqih, the doctrine of clerical supremacy, enforced by the IRGC’s guns and the Revolutionary Courts’ verdicts. Under the current system, the Revolutionary Guard has grown to become the most powerful body behind the ruling clerics’ robes and they will prop up whatever figurehead serves their survival.

The obsession with whether Mojtaba is alive is understandable, but it risks becoming a distraction. Regimes do not fall because their leaders fall. They fall because they are dismantled: politically, economically, and through the sustained pressure of people who refuse to be governed by them. The Iranian people have already demonstrated that courage, at enormous cost. What is needed now is not speculation about one man’s pulse, but a coordinated, sustained effort to make the Islamic Republic’s ideology untenable.
Whether or not Mojtaba Khamenei is alive, the regime’s credibility is not.

Kimia Shahsvari is a second-generation Iranian based in Europe who writes about the social and political ties that connect Iranians abroad to their homeland.