Since being announced as the new supreme leader of the 47-year-old Islamic Republic, Mojtaba Khamenei has not been seen, head, videod, or even had a photo taken, leaving many wondering who is really in charge of 91 million people. 

The first leader of the newborn Republic was Ruhollah Khomeini, a charismatic, aloof figure who somehow took a country from 3,000 years of monarchy. Until his death, clerics, seemingly not having a high-profile person to replace him, opted for Ali Khamenei, who later consolidated power until his death on February 28. However, his replacement came about in a murky way, and two months later, everyone seems perplexed by how the Islamic Republic's system is handling the power transfer. 

Iran technically resolved its succession crisis on March 9, when the Assembly of Experts announced Mojtaba Khamenei as the third supreme leader of the Islamic Republic. It was not televised like his father's selection in the 1980s, partly due to the war with the US and Israel, but also due to any gathering becoming a target for American Tomahawk missiles, like what occurred in Qom, where the US and Israel took out the top flight of clerics deciding the next leader. 

Khamenei was allegedly injured in the airstrike that killed his father, and his appointment was followed by a prolonged absence from public view, which has only raised more questions about who actually holds power in the country. It certainly isn't President Masoud Pezeshkian who appears to want to do what he was elected to do, not being the target of recent airstrikes, but rather a shift toward the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), which many Iran watchers would have said was inevitable. 

To make matters worse for the system. Khamenei has not made a public appearance since being appointed in early March. His first statement was not delivered by him at all. It was read aloud by a state television anchor while a still photograph of Khamenei was displayed on screen, meaning that nearly two weeks after the conflict began, no video or audio recording of the new leader himself had been released. There is so little verified footage of the new leader that government news outlets and state-backed social media channels have resorted to circulating AI-generated videos of him to drum up support, depicting him delivering speeches to large crowds and standing beside his father at key moments, scenes that never actually occurred. "They're calling him the AI supreme leader," an Iranian abroad said with a smirk.

The IRGC, which pressured the remaining Assembly of Experts with repeated contacts and psychological and political pressure to elect Mojtaba in the first place, appears to understand this better than anyone. US and Israeli intelligence saw security chief Ali Larijani as Iran's de facto leader in the immediate aftermath, until Israel assassinated him too. Now Iran has Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf leading negotiations with J.D. Vance in Pakistan, which confirms what many thought was happening in the background: the transfer of power from clerics to the guards has already happened; it was not announced until a deal with the US could be reached. 

Foad Izadi, a university professor at Tehran University, hinted that the younger Khamenei could be a "temporary" supreme leader in an interview with Britain's Channel 4, leading to suggestions that those in the know that this is a transition phase to something different. 

The constitutional architecture of the Islamic Republic assumes a supreme leader exists not merely in name but in practice. As supreme leader, Khamenei commanded the armed forces, appointed the chief justice, supervised state media, and controlled the Guardian Council, which holds the power to vet electoral candidates and veto parliamentary legislation.

None of those functions transfers cleanly to a man who has not been seen in public since his father was killed. Decrees can be issued in his name. Orders can be attributed to him. But the system's authority ultimately rests on the visible, living presence of a jurist who can be seen to be exercising it. The Islamic Republic, for all its institutional density, is not a bureaucracy. It is a theocracy, and theocracies require a face.

With the IRGC now filling the role of commander-in-chief, albeit unofficially, a more decisive power structure appears to be developing, away from the seminary and to the military headquarters. A senior Gulf Arab official told Axios that the IRGC is "taking over Iran" and that they are "highly ideological and are ready to die."

That is a significant shift. Khamenei père spent three decades managing the tension between the clerical establishment and the Revolutionary Guards through personal authority and selective patronage. His son, injured, maybe also dead, invisible, who, without his father's decades of institutional capital, cannot do the same. The result is not so much a theocracy of 1979, it is a military junta more akin to 1980s Argentina dressed in the robes of a cleric. 

The most dangerous aspect of this arrangement is not its instability. It is its opacity. A US official noted, "We have no evidence that he is really the one giving orders. It's beyond weird. We don't think the Iranians would have gone through all this trouble to choose a dead guy as the supreme leader, but at the same time, we have no proof that he is taking the helm," Barak Ravid wrote in Axios.

Trump's recent comments, often seen as intelligence reports, are repeated verbatim to the press or in a late-night tweet, suggesting that a transfer of power has already occurred. Trump, often known for bare-faced lies, also has a terrible habit of leaking CIA intel whenever he feels like it. 

If talks in Pakistan resume in the next few days and the US and Iran finally come to an agreement, we may see the wood for the trees.