The burial of Iran’s former supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in the holy city of Mashhad on 9 July concluded a week of mass funeral processions, yet the ceremony was defined by the absence of his son and successor, Mojtaba Khamenei. The new supreme leader, appointed in March after his father was killed in a US-Israeli airstrike on 28 February, has made no public appearance and issued only written statements. His non-attendance at the funeral, where other senior figures including parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf and judiciary chief Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei were present, has intensified scrutiny of his physical condition and the Islamic Republic’s political trajectory.

Iranian officials and analysts in Geneva and Washington attribute the absence to a combination of severe injuries and security imperatives. President Masoud Pezeshkian stated in May that Mojtaba Khamenei’s health was improving, but senior sources cited by international news agencies say he suffered facial disfigurement in the same strike that killed his father. Farzan Sabet, a researcher at the Geneva Graduate Institute, told Agence France-Presse that the leader is likely not “publicly presentable” and that any appearance could be used by adversaries to track him for a future assassination. The security risk is underscored by the fact that his father was killed in the opening salvo of an unannounced war, and a whole layer of Iranian officials was eliminated in subsequent strikes.

Viewed from Washington and London, the vacuum created by Mojtaba Khamenei’s invisibility is accelerating a structural shift in Iran’s power architecture. Jason Brodsky, policy director at United Against Nuclear Iran, notes that the new leader relied on the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to secure his position and is now “more dependent” on the force, altering the balance between the supreme leader’s office and the ideological army. Analysts at the Middle East Institute and the Geneva Graduate Institute point to a potential power struggle between Mojtaba Khamenei and Ghalibaf, who has emerged as the most visible political figure during the war. The IRGC’s prominence was further signalled by the reappearance of commander Ahmad Vahidi at the Tehran ceremonies, after months of wartime absence.

The funeral took place against a backdrop of renewed hostilities: US forces struck some 170 targets in Iran this week after Washington blamed Tehran for attacks on shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, and Iranian retaliatory salvos targeted American bases in the Gulf before a fresh pause. Diplomatic channels, mediated by Qatar, remain active, but the supreme leader’s prolonged absence is fuelling public unease. Residents in Isfahan and Tehran, speaking to international media, expressed a need to see a visible leader during a period of national crisis. The regime has sought to project continuity by having Mojtaba’s brothers lead prayers and a grandson of revolutionary founder Ruhollah Khomeini speak on his behalf, yet no timeline has been given for his first public appearance. The dossier remains open, with the leadership’s legitimacy increasingly tied to the IRGC’s ability to manage both internal order and external negotiations.