All articles tagged with #iran politics
Iran's president says it’s 'very difficult' to contact the absent Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, who has not been seen publicly since taking the role and even skipped his own father’s funeral. The leadership absence comes amid a tense military and diplomatic standoff, underscoring leadership uncertainty as Tehran navigates regional tensions.
Exclusive reporting says Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian met Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei for only a few minutes in the back seat of a dark Tehran car, unable to see his counterpart and unsure if the voice belonged to Khamenei; the encounter, secured through pressure after Pezeshkian threatened to resign, contradicts his public account of a longer meeting and underscores Tehran's opaque leadership amid ongoing US-Iran diplomacy.
Mojtaba Khamenei, long viewed as a potential successor to his late father Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has risen in prominence as Iran faces a succession question amid war and U.S.-Israel pressure; though he has never held public office, his ties to the Revolutionary Guard and the assembly that will name the next supreme leader have fueled speculation about a hereditary transition in Iran’s theocracy.
Iran faces an unsettled path to a new supreme leader after Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's death, with the Assembly of Experts set to choose from contenders such as Mojtaba Khamenei, Alireza Arafi, Mohammad Mehdi Mirbagheri, Hassan Khomeini, and Hashem Hosseini Bushehri. Any successor must be a male cleric who meets constitutional requirements and shows loyalty to the Islamic Republic, but internal power dynamics and regional pressures could shape the outcome, and reformist clerics may be sidelined in the likelyگیری selection process.