- 2 months ago
Iran is often described as a republic, a theocracy, a military state, or a hybrid of all three. That description is not simply academic language; it reflects a political system in which formal institutions, religious authority, security organizations, and elite networks all shape decision-making. When observers ask who is really running Iran right now, the answer is not limited to one person or one office. Instead, power in Iran is distributed across a tightly connected hierarchy dominated by the Supreme Leader, supported by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and reinforced by clerical, judicial, and intelligence institutions. Understanding this structure is essential for anyone following Iranian politics, Middle East security, or global energy markets.
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00:00The new supreme leader is actually no longer supreme.
00:04Months of conflict and political turmoil have fueled questions about who truly holds power
00:08in Iran.
00:09Who's really running around right now?
00:11Some analysts argue power is shifting behind the scenes.
00:14Power has gravitated away from the office of the supreme leader.
00:18So who is truly calling the shots?
00:20Here's the full breakdown.
00:22The Men at the Top
00:24On 28 February 2026, a joint U.S. and Israeli attack killed Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah
00:30Ali Khamenei.
00:31He had led Iran since 1989.
00:33His death left the top of the system empty.
00:35For a short time an interim council ran the country.
00:38It included President Masoud Pazeshkian, the head of the judiciary, and a cleric from the
00:42Guardian Council.
00:43The council acted under the constitution until a new leader could be chosen.
00:46Then on 8 March 2026, the Assembly of Experts chose a new supreme leader, Majtaba Khamenei,
00:51the son of Ali Khamenei.
00:53It was the first time in the Islamic Republic that a son followed his father into the role.
00:57Majtaba was born in 1969.
00:59He is a mid-level cleric.
01:00At age 17, he joined the Revolutionary Guards during the Iran-Iraq War.
01:04Later he studied in Qum and taught seminary classes there.
01:07For years he worked inside his father's office as a deputy, and he built ties to the Revolutionary
01:12Guards and the basage.
01:13The guards pushed for him.
01:14They wanted a leader who knew the security system and would hold the system together
01:17under wartime pressure.
01:19His selection was fast, and it happened while the war was still going on.
01:23On paper, Majtaba holds full power.
01:25He is commander of the armed forces.
01:27He controls the judiciary, foreign policy, and state media under articles 57 and 110 of
01:32the constitution.
01:33But many Iran experts say the real power now sits somewhere else.
01:37One of them is Ali Viz, the Iran project director at the International Crisis Group.
01:41In an interview with Farid Zakaria, Viz explained what changed.
01:45So there are two things that have happened, Farid.
01:47The regime is still the same.
01:48The system did not fall.
01:49The same laws, the same offices, and the same rules stayed in place.
01:53What changed was the group of men now filling those offices.
01:56There are new faces, and these new faces are in the category of uber hawks in Iran.
02:02These new men came from the hardest edge of the system.
02:04And with Ali Khamenei gone, the balance of power inside Iran moved.
02:08So this is the kind of people we're dealing with right now.
02:11And the other thing that has happened is that power has gravitated away from the office of
02:16the supreme leader towards the revolutionary guards.
02:19Under the father, the guards answered to the supreme leader.
02:22Under the son, Viz says that order flipped.
02:25But his son, the new supreme leader, is actually no longer supreme.
02:30Viz put the reason in plain terms.
02:32He is subservient to the revolutionary guards because he owes his position and the survival
02:37of his regime to them.
02:39So Majtaba owes his seat to the guards, and he needs them to keep the system standing.
02:43Another Iran analyst laid out the same picture.
02:46Who's really running around right now?
02:49Well, it is still the Islamic Republic, just with new faces.
02:52The point is that Iran is not one man.
02:54It is a network of offices and power centers.
02:56When one person is removed, the system fills the gap.
02:59If you remove one individual, the rest of the system can fill the gap.
03:04That is what happened after the war began.
03:06So who are the men filling the gaps now?
03:08The first name is Ahmed Vahidi.
03:10He became IRGC commander-in-chief on 1 March 2026, after the last commander was killed.
03:15He is a veteran of the guards and a former defense and interior minister.
03:18Reporting from the New York Times and the Foundation for Defense of Democracies points
03:22to him as the most important military figure in the country.
03:24He directs the war response, shapes Iran's stance in talks, and sets the line on the
03:29strait of Hormuz.
03:30The second name is Mohamed Bagher Zalgeter.
03:32He became secretary of the Supreme National Security Council in March 2026, after Ali
03:37Larajani was killed.
03:38The council ties together defense, intelligence, and foreign policy, and Zalgeter is a hardline
03:43voice in step with Vahidi.
03:45The third name is Mohamed Bagher Galabaft, the speaker of parliament and a former IRGC
03:49air force commander.
03:50He is the most public political face of these security networks.
03:53Around them are other guard figures, such as Yahya Rahim Safevi, a long-time military
03:58advisor to both the old supreme leader and the new one.
04:01The guards are not only soldiers, they also control large parts of Iran's economy, including
04:06oil, construction, and telecommunications, and they run much of the country's internal
04:11security.
04:11Together, these men form the Corps.
04:13The president and the foreign ministry make decisions, but they do not make them.
04:17And if you're wondering how that happened, you'd have to look to the war that built this
04:21new order.
04:22The war that rewrote Iran's leadership.
04:25The order that rules Iran today was forged in fire.
04:29In the pre-dawn dark of 28 February 2026, the sky over Iran split open.
04:33U.S. and Israeli forces unleashed nearly 900 strikes in the first 12 hours, a thunderous
04:38opening wave that slammed into missile sites, air defenses, nuclear facilities, and the guarded
04:43compounds where the country's leaders slept.
04:45When the smoke cleared, the man who had ruled Iran for nearly four decades was dead, and so
04:50were dozens of the commanders who had kept his machine running.
04:53This was decapitation by design, a deliberate attempt to sever the head from the body of
04:57the Islamic Republic, and the killing did not stop with Ali Khamenei.
05:00In a brutal cascade, an estimated 48 to 52 senior officials and commanders were cut down.
05:05The sitting IRGC commander, Security Council Chief Ali Larajani, the defense minister, intelligence
05:11chiefs, and a long line of brigadiers and deputies, Iran's leadership was hollowed out
05:15in a matter of weeks.
05:16But the head that was severed grew back, harder, colder, and dressed in uniform.
05:20Into the smoking vacuum stepped the revolutionary guards, the one pillar left standing when the
05:24clerical establishment crumbled.
05:26Ahmed Vahidi rose to command the IRGC, Zalgader seized the Security Council, and a wall of
05:30battle-hardened hardliners filled every empty chair.
05:33The war did not topple the regime.
05:35It militarized it, welding real power to the men with guns.
05:37At the center of it all sat a wounded, silent figure.
05:40Mijtaba Khamenei was injured in the February strikes and vanished from public view.
05:44He has made almost no confirmed appearances since taking the throne of the Islamic Republic.
05:48His words are delivered on paper and read aloud by others.
05:51A leader unseen, speaking through the mouths of others, while the generals around him carried
05:55the real weight of war.
05:56Across the water, the United States pressed its advantage with cold confidence.
06:00In a Pentagon briefing on Operation Epic Fury, the message to Tehran was blunt and unyielding.
06:06No one sails from the Strait of Hormuz to anywhere in the world without the permission of the
06:11United States Navy.
06:12An ironclad naval blockade tightened around Iran by the hour, choking its ports and hunting
06:17its tankers across two oceans.
06:19The guards struck back with mines and speedboats, and the Pentagon answered with contempt.
06:23Behind the insults sat one immovable American demand, repeated like a drumbeat through every
06:28statement.
06:37While the warship circled, the true cost of the war bled into the lives of ordinary Iranians.
06:42The economy, already battered by years of sanctions, cracked wide open.
06:45Because the bottom line remains the bottom line.
06:49Iran will never get a nuclear bomb.
06:50The Strait of Hormuz seized up, with traffic collapsing by more than 90% at its worst, and
06:55oil prices rocketed from around $70 a barrel to well past 100.
06:59Iran's own oil exports, the lifeblood of the state, were strangled.
07:02Inside the country, the pain was sharper still.
07:04Analysts projected double-digit GDP losses.
07:07Food inflation tore past 100% in some periods, and 1 to 2 million jobs evaporated as factories
07:13fell silent and supply chains snapped.
07:15The Riyal buckled.
07:16Bread, meat, and milk slipped out of reach for families who had already gone without.
07:20The human toll was heavier than any chart.
07:22Thousands of Iranians, soldiers and civilians alike were killed or wounded, children among
07:26them, as strikes tore through power stations, hospitals, and schools.
07:29Beyond Iran's borders, the fire spread.
07:32Hezbollah and Israel traded blows across Lebanon, displacing vast numbers of people, while Gulf
07:36states braced against the shockwaves and global energy markets shuttered.
07:40Through the chaos, Iran refused to fold.
07:42Its answer came from Mosin Razee.
07:44Military advisor to the wounded supreme leader, in an interview with CNN asked about the
07:49This $24 billion is a test of trust that Iran wants to have with Trump.
07:54Frozen billions Tehran wanted returned.
07:57He framed the money as a test.
07:58If the war continues and the naval blockade is not lifted, we will drag the war to the
08:04Indian Ocean, the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, the Red Sea, and the Mediterranean.
08:10Then came the warning, delivered in the flat, patient tone of a man who believed Iran could
08:15widen the war at will.
08:16A June memorandum of understanding briefly promised a way out, only to collapse in July
08:20under renewed strikes and shipping attacks.
08:22And the deadliest shadow lengthened over everything.
08:25U.S. intelligence assessments in July 2026 judged that the new leadership was more open
08:29to building a nuclear weapon than Ali Khamenei ever was, the old man's religious edict against
08:34the bomb having died with him.
08:36To understand how power could shift this far, this fast, we have to look back at the men
08:40who held it before.
08:41The Long Slide of Power
08:43To see how a wounded cleric came to sit above an empire of generals, you have to walk back
08:48to the very idea that built the throne.
08:50The office of supreme leader rests on a single radical concept, Velyati Faki, the guardianship
08:55of the Islamic jurist.
08:56Its architect argued that, while the 12th Imam remains hidden from the world, a qualified
09:00religious scholar must stand as guardian over the whole community, ruling in his place,
09:04according to sacred law.
09:05That bold claim became the beating heart of the 1979 constitution, and it has crowned only
09:11three men.
09:12The first was Ayatollah Ruhala Khamenei, the towering, austere figure who swept the shah
09:16from his peacock throne and returned from exile to found the Islamic Republic.
09:20Khamenei held the rare and lofty rank of Marji Taklid, a source of emulation for millions,
09:25and his authority was intensely personal, carved from charisma, revolution, and an iron will.
09:30He set the very mold of the office, absolute clerical command, sitting above the president,
09:34the parliament, and the courts, with the final word on war and peace.
09:37Through the long agony of the Iran-Iraq war, the hostage crisis, and the birth of the republic's
09:42institutions, he ruled as a living symbol.
09:44And it was under his hand that a fateful creation took its first breath.
09:47The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, forged to defend the revolution from enemies within
09:51and without.
09:52He built the very sword that would one day outweigh his successors.
09:56When Khamenei died in 1989, the crown passed in a way that revealed a quiet truth about Iran,
10:00that raw religious rank was never the only thing that mattered.
10:03His heir, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was only a mid-ranking cleric, so the rules bent to fit the man.
10:08The constitution was amended to lower the religious bar, and Khamenei was swiftly elevated
10:12to Ayatollah.
10:13Political reliability, not spiritual grandeur, had chosen a supreme leader.
10:17What followed was the longest and most transformative reign the office would ever see,
10:21nearly 37 years.
10:22Khamenei took Khamenei's charismatic, personal rule, and hardened it into a vast,
10:26institutional machine.
10:27He centralized authority in the leader's office, threaded his loyalists through every organ of
10:32the state, and most consequential of all, steadily fed the power of the revolutionary guards,
10:36letting them grow from a military force into a sprawling economic and political empire.
10:40He crushed the Green Movement, steered the nuclear program to the very edge of a weapon
10:44while forbidding the final step, and bound the survival of the republic to the security
10:48state.
10:49Yet even as he empowered the guards, they still ultimately answered to him.
10:52He fed the beast, but he held its leash.
10:54Then came the fire of February 2026, and the leash was cut.
10:58His son, Majtaba Khamenei, was raised to the throne on 8 March 2026, the first father-to-son
11:03succession in the republic's history.
11:05A dynastic handover that struck many as a betrayal of the revolution's fierce rejection
11:09of hereditary kings, Majtaba carried none of his father's clerical prestige and none of
11:14Khamenei's fire.
11:15What he carried instead were decades of shadowy ties to the guards, and a debt he could never
11:19repay.
11:20Chosen in the panic of war, propped up by the very commanders he was meant to command,
11:24he inherited the title of supreme leader, without inheriting the substance of it.
11:29Look across the three reigns and the pattern is unmistakable, a long, slow slide of power.
11:33Khamenei ruled through the sheer force of his person.
11:36Khamenei ruled through the institutions and the security state he so carefully built.
11:40And Majtaba does not truly rule at all.
11:42He presides, a formal crown resting on a body of generals.
11:45Succession in Iran was never a clean matter of holiness passing to the worthiest scholar.
11:49In 1989, it turned on political trust, when the rules were rewritten to fit a mid-ranking
11:54cleric.
11:55In 2026, it turned on wartime survival and the raw muscle of the IRGC.
11:59Each handover chipped away at the idea the revolution began with, that the most learned
12:03jurist, chosen on merit, should guard the nation, and each one moved the country a step closer
12:08to rule by the men in uniform.
12:10And so the wheel comes full circle, back to where this story began.
12:13The guards that Khamenei created to guard the revolution, and that Khamenei fattened into a
12:17state within a state, have finally stepped out of the shadow of the clergy and into the
12:20light of command.
12:21The time headline captured it in a single devastating line, Iran's supreme leader no longer reigns
12:26supreme.
12:27The title still exists.
12:28The turban still sits at the top of the chart.
12:30But the hands on the levers of war, of the Strait of Hormuz of the nuclear question, and
12:34of Iran's very survival, belong to the generals, exactly as Ali Viz warned.
12:39The man at the top is no longer the man in control.
12:42If you enjoyed this video, click on the ones showing on your screen to enjoy more.
12:47of America with regard to the