Inside Iran’s New Wartime Leadership

Earlier this month, Iranian state media did something it had never done before.Mehr News, an outlet controlled by the country’s Islamic Development Organization, released a video titled “First Images of the Leader,” showing Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei addressing a small group of students. The footage was undated. It came, however, days after Israeli outlets reported the 56-year-old cleric was in “extremely critical condition,” and it appears to have done little to settle the question consuming Iran’s political class: is anyone actually running the country right now.The clip echoed a similar undated video IRIB released in March, showing Khamenei teaching religious sciences. President Masoud Pezeshkian acknowledged this week that reaching him has been “very difficult,” though he described their last exchange as constructive.Multiple sources close to Pezeshkian’s administration told IranWire that no cabinet minister has met with Khamenei since the February 28 strike that killed his father, Ali Khamenei, and that officials “would not be surprised” to hear news of his death.Iranian authorities have repeatedly denied he’s incapacitated. But the man now holding life-tenure authority o...