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Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader for thirty-six years, was killed by American and Israeli strikes on 28 February 2026. Eight days later the clerical assembly that chooses the leader named his son, Mojtaba. The new leader was wounded in the war and has barely been seen since. Whether the Islamic Republic can hold together under him is the question its enemies and its own officials are both asking.
The wider confrontation, its history and each side's full account: Iran in regional and international confrontation.
State media released video of Mojtaba Khamenei in August and later a recording of his voice, after months of rumour that he was dead or incapacitated. The American president says he is badly wounded; Israel's prime minister says the fall of the government is within reach. The funeral of the elder Khamenei in July drew very large crowds.
The Islamic Republic was founded against a hereditary monarchy, and its highest office has now passed from father to son. The leader commands the armed forces and has the last word on war and on the nuclear question. A leader who cannot appear in public leaves that word to others, above all to the Revolutionary Guard. For Iran's enemies the succession is the system's weakest point. For the system, showing that it survived the killing of its head is the proof of its strength.
The constitution worked. With the country under bombardment, the Assembly of Experts met and chose a leader within days, as it did in 1989. He was chosen for his standing and his closeness to his father's thinking, not for his name. Millions came to the funeral. The enemy killed a leader hoping the state would fall, and it did not.
The regime is hollow. Its leader was found and killed, his successor is an unseen invalid picked to keep a family and a security apparatus in charge, and its senior commanders have been killed one after another. It rules by fear at home and is a push away from collapse.
The Islamic Republic's leaves out that the son's clerical rank is well below what the office requires, that the choice was made in secret and under the Guard's eye, and that the leader has not addressed his people in person.
Jerusalem's and Washington's leaves out that they have predicted the collapse for decades; that killing the leader rallied many Iranians to the flag; and that what follows a collapse may be the Guard in uniform rather than a friendly democracy.
The opposition's leaves out that it has no agreed alternative, and that its most prominent figure is himself the heir to a throne.
Names and terms the sides do not share. This page keeps them out of its own voice.
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A revolution against a crown has produced a dynasty. The son was never elected to anything, holds no real religious rank, and ran his father's office and its ties to the Guard from the shadows. His elevation shows that the republic's institutions are a stage set.
Not one voice: some mourned, some celebrated, most were not asked.