Iran’s New Ruler Has the Levers. That Does Not Mean He Controls the Machine

Iran’s mass funeral ceremonies for Ayatollah Ali Khamenei have become the public face of a wartime succession. His coffin moved through Tehran on Monday, July 6, months after he was killed on February 28 in the opening U.S.-Israeli strikes of the Iran war, while President Masoud Pezeshkian, Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf and Revolutionary Guard commander Gen. Ahmad Vahidi appeared at prayers for the late leader reported by AP¹. The person missing from the most important stage was the new Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, who has not appeared publicly at the ceremonies and is believed to be in hiding after reportedly being wounded in the strike that killed his father according to AP².

That absence is the best symbol of Iran’s current problem. The Islamic Republic is trying to look centralized while bargaining over the things that keep the regime alive: nuclear leverage, oil exports, frozen assets and the Strait of Hormuz. I think the right answer is sharper than the usual “chaos versus control” frame. Iran is not fragmenting into a leaderless scrum. But it is also not consolidating under a confident new ruler. Power is moving into a clerical-security committee system around Mojtaba, the Supreme National Security Council and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or IRGC, the parallel military-security force created to defend the revolution. That makes Tehran more hardline, but not necessarily more reliable.

The distinction matters for ceasefire negotiations, meaning the talks meant to turn a pause in fighting into a lasting settlement. A single ruler can make a dangerous bargain, then enforce it. A fragmented regime can sign one paragraph in Doha and sabotage another in the Strait. Iran today looks closer to the second case than Washington should like.

Start with the office itself. Iran’s Supreme Leader is not just a senior cleric. He is the apex of the state, with command over the armed forces and final authority over security policy. Mojtaba Khamenei was named to that post on March 8 by the Assembly of Experts, and Iran’s political and security establishment, including the IRGC and the armed forces, quickly pledged support according to Al Jazeera³. He had never held elected office, but had long been influential in his father’s circle and had deep ties to the IRGC Al Jazeera reported³. Le Monde put the point bluntly in March: Mojtaba’s rise shifted internal power further toward the IRGC, already “the most influential force both economically and politically in Iran” in its analysis⁴.

So yes, the funeral politics are not mere mourning. They are a legitimacy campaign for a succession that needs the crowd because the new leader cannot, or will not, show himself. The striking image from Sunday was not just grief for Ali Khamenei, but a boy holding a picture of Mojtaba with a machine gun while the new ruler stayed away from public view as AP described². That is not normal institutional confidence. It is managed vulnerability.

The nuclear file shows the same pattern. Uranium enrichment means raising the share of uranium-235, the isotope needed for reactor fuel and, at much higher levels, nuclear weapons. The International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog, said in June that it could not provide information on the current size, composition or whereabouts of Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile, nor verify whether enrichment-related activity had been suspended AP reported from the confidential report⁵. An Institute for Science and International Security analysis of the June IAEA reports said the agency was unable to report on Iran’s uranium stocks, their location and chemical form, or the status of centrifuges and related equipment in its assessment⁶. In bargaining terms, that opacity is leverage. In enforcement terms, it is a nightmare.

The June Islamabad memorandum of understanding is supposed to connect these files. Axios, which published a transcript after an official read the text to reporters, said the MOU declares the war over, calls for Iran to open the Strait of Hormuz, requires the U.S. to lift its blockade, starts 60 days of nuclear negotiations and waives sanctions so Iran can sell oil during that period according to Axios⁷. Al Jazeera reported that the memo includes a 60-day path toward a final deal, potential sanctions easing and Iranian fuel-export waivers, while Tehran agreed to dilute enriched uranium in exchange for large-scale economic relief in its account of the signing⁸.

Here is where the apparent consolidation frays. Mojtaba did not publicly own the MOU like a ruler confident in his command. In a written statement carried by Iranian state media, he said he had “a different opinion” but approved the agreement after Pezeshkian and other officials pledged to protect Iran’s rights and the “resistance front” and accepted responsibility Al Jazeera reported⁹. Iran International described the same move as Mojtaba authorizing the MOU only after Pezeshkian, as head of the Supreme National Security Council, accepted responsibility, a maneuver that preserved room to fault the government if the deal failed in its analysis¹⁰. I do not read that as reformists taking over. I read it as a security coalition distributing blame.

Frozen assets are the clearest test. These are Iranian state funds stuck abroad by sanctions or banking restrictions. On July 1, Iranian officials told Reuters that talks with Qatar would focus on unfreezing $6 billion, U.S. recognition of Iranian sovereignty claims over Hormuz and release of Iranian frozen assets, according to the Institute for the Study of War’s Critical Threats Project summary¹¹. The same update said Iran claimed an agreement to use unfrozen funds for needed goods, while U.S. and Qatari officials had not confirmed the claim and a U.S. official denied to Israeli media that Washington had agreed to unfreeze Iranian funds according to Critical Threats¹¹. That is not a clean command channel. It is a negotiation in which Tehran’s internal and external audiences are being told different things.

Oil money is also securitized, not simply nationalized under a civilian government. The U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctioned more than 30 individuals, entities and vessels in February for enabling illicit Iranian petroleum sales, describing Iran’s shadow fleet as a primary revenue source for domestic repression, terrorist proxies and weapons programs, and saying separate networks helped the IRGC and Iran’s defense ministry procure materials for ballistic missile and advanced conventional weapons production in Treasury’s release¹². That does not prove every barrel is controlled by the Guard. It does show why sanctions relief and oil exports are not merely economic files. They are regime-security files.

Hormuz is the most visible pressure point. The Strait of Hormuz is the narrow passage between the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman, and it is one of the world’s most important energy chokepoints. Gulf states understand the danger. A U.K. House of Commons Library briefing said the Gulf Cooperation Council called after the MOU for free access through Hormuz and said lasting peace required addressing Iran’s ballistic missiles, drones and support for armed groups abroad in its July briefing¹³. Insurers understand it too. Howden Re estimated in April that war-risk premiums for ships transiting Hormuz had risen from about 0.10 to 0.125 percent of vessel value before the conflict to 2 to 3 percent in March, a 1,000 to 2,400 percent jump in its report¹⁴.

Iran’s behavior since the MOU has made the problem worse. Its joint military command warned on July 2 that oil tankers moving through Hormuz must use Iranian-approved routes or face a “forceful response” AP reported¹⁵. Iran International reported that the Supreme National Security Council had told commercial vessels to submit passage requests to a new Persian Gulf Strait Administration, that no fees would be charged for 60 days, and that ships would have to transit at assigned times and along assigned routes according to its report¹⁰. Axios later reported that U.S. and Iranian negotiators in Doha were arguing over Iran’s demand for tolls and its claim that it and Oman should administer the strait after the 60-day MOU period in its account of the talks¹⁶.

The strongest counterargument is that all of this proves consolidation: the Supreme Leader, the Supreme National Security Council and the armed forces are clearly the institutions handling the nuclear, maritime and money files. That is partly true. The trouble is that they are not speaking with one uncontested voice. Iran’s state broadcaster cut short a recorded interview with Ghalibaf while he was discussing the release of Iranian assets abroad, possible IAEA inspections, the MOU’s reconstruction credit and Mojtaba’s strategic message, triggering protests from parliament Iran International reported¹⁷. Al Jazeera reported that a hardline legislator’s state TV interview about alleged confidential correspondence from Mojtaba on the ceasefire and Hormuz tolling was also abruptly ended and then vanished from the archive in its report from Tehran¹⁸. A regime that cannot smoothly broadcast its own case for a deal has not fully settled the politics of that deal.

My judgment is this: after Khamenei, Iran’s war, money and nuclear leverage are being pulled into a harder security state, but not into a stable chain of command. Mojtaba is the constitutional apex. The IRGC is the coercive and economic backbone. The Supreme National Security Council is the bargaining hub. Pezeshkian and Ghalibaf are useful faces for implementation and blame. That architecture can threaten tankers, hide uranium facts and bargain for frozen funds. It may not be able to make every commitment stick.

For Washington, Gulf states, Israel and insurers, the funeral crowd is the wrong indicator. The better test is whether Iran allows verifiable IAEA access, keeps Hormuz open without unilateral tolls, aligns its public claims about frozen assets with confirmed U.S. and Qatari authorizations, and stops turning every implementation step into an internal loyalty test. Until then, I would treat Tehran’s signature as real but conditional. The machine has operators. It does not yet have a settled driver.