When Iran’s leaders and senior military commanders paid tribute to the slain supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in the elaborate, weeklong funeral that began on Friday, it was supposed to be a display of strength, endurance and unity after war with the United States and Israel.
A military band played an anthem. Officials who had not appeared together in public since the war began months ago walked side by side: the president, the speaker of Parliament, the head of the judiciary, and top generals in the Revolutionary Guards Corps.
Missing, notably, was Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, who succeeded his father as the new supreme leader and who has not been seen in public since his appointment in March.
The moment offered a respite from the weeks and days leading to the funeral, when senior Iranian officials and prominent political figures fought openly and viciously over negotiations with the United States. They traded accusations of delusion, treason, coup plotting, and disobeying and manipulating the new supreme leader.
“I spit on this era where they kill our leader and then we speak of peace with the United States,” a prominent hard-line strategist, Hassan Rahimpour-Azghadi, recently declared at a rally in the capital, Tehran. Instead of negotiations, he called for revenge.
Ayatollah Khamenei tried to settle that furor by issuing a carefully worded written statement — a move that only further fanned the flames. The hard-line supporters have chanted at nightly rallies that they will back down only if the supreme leader shows his face or releases an audio recording.
He has done neither. It even remains unclear whether Ayatollah Khamenei, 56, will appear at any of his father’s funeral ceremonies this week. He was absent on Wednesday at the memorial ceremony in Tehran for his wife, who was killed with their teenage son and other relatives on the war’s first day, when Israeli and U.S. forces bombed the family compound.
Nonetheless, funeral organizers have tried to portray the ceremonies as a farewell to the father and a pledge of allegiance to his son.
Two Revolutionary Guards members and a person involved with the funeral planning said in interviews that Ayatollah Khamenei has told officials that he wants to participate. He would like to attend the burial ceremony, at a Shiite shrine of Imam Reza in the city of Mashhad, scheduled for July 9, the officials said, and to recite the prayer of the dead over his father’s body. In his first public statement after taking power in March, Ayatollah Khamenei said that he had seen his father’s body.
The Iranians, who all asked for anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss sensitive funeral preparations publicly, said security officials had so far rejected the idea out of concerns that Israel could try to assassinate Ayatollah Khamenei at the ceremony or track his movements to his hiding spot.
Fractures Among Conservatives
Ayatollah Khamenei’s absence has raised questions about who is really running the country, and allowed extraordinary open divisions to fester.
Last week, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the parliamentary speaker who has led negotiations with the United States and emerged as a key political figure, was abruptly cut off on live television and taken off the air as he explained details of the cease-fire agreement.
A firestorm followed, with calls for the director of state broadcasting, who was appointed by the senior Khamenei and hails from the ultra-hardline camp, to be fired.
For months, state television has amplified attacks against the negotiating team. In nightly rallies held in Tehran’s squares, conservatives have called for the prosecution and even the death of negotiators.
Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, who has also participated in the negotiations, was heckled when he visited a Shia shrine in Iraq, where he was organizing part of the funeral, by Iranian pilgrims chanting “death to appeasers,” videos showed.
A well-known, hard-line political analyst, Foad Izadi, on state television last week called the government and Mr. Ghalibaf’s team “stupid with no brains,” and “deluded.”
Iran has always had intense political rivalries that have sometimes exploded into public view. But traditionally these divisions have been between conservative and reformist factions, one intent on holding on to the religious, anti-Western ideology of the Islamic revolution and the other seeking, and often failing, to bring change.
Now, in the void left by the killing of the senior supreme leader, who exerted absolute power over all important decisions, the conservatives have split. One side describes itself as pragmatic, arguing that survival will require ending hostilities with the United States and opening the economy. The other, a minority of hard-liners, rejects any concessions to the United States, including on Iran’s nuclear program, and believes Iran can prevail by prolonging the war.
The public divisions only scratch the surface of the deeper fractures emerging out of sight, according to four senior Iranian officials and the two members of the Revolutionary Guards. They describe a vicious battle by each side to claim the new ayatollah as an ally, and dominate Iran’s political future.
So far, they say, the pragmatic branch — which includes senior generals of the Revolutionary Guards, Mr. Ghalibaf, President Masoud Pezeshkian and Gen. Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr, the head of the Supreme National Security Council — has gained the upper hand. They have ignored the noise and pushed through key decisions about accepting a cease-fire, negotiating directly with Vice President JD Vance and signing an agreement with President Trump.
Iranian officials said part of the reason hard-liners were so averse to a deal with U.S. officials was because they understood the current negotiations were broader than the 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, and could pave the way for sweeping changes if Iran and the United States reached a détente after 47 years of hostility.
“We want a grand bargain that removes the threat of war and allows us to prosper economically,” said Mehdi Rahmati, an analyst close to the government in Iran in an interview. “People just want to live.”
Mr. Pezeshkian said recently that Ayatollah Khamenei approved the decision to reach a diplomatic deal with the United States, and that he refuses “to bend to the will of a minority.”
But so far even declaring a definitive victory in talks has been difficult, analysts say, because negotiations have stalled, Mr. Trump has threatened a return to war, and tit-for-tat attacks have briefly erupted. This has given the hard-liners ammunition to say that trusting the United States is foolish and that, because Ayatollah Khamenei is no fool, he could not possibly approve of the diplomatic outreach.
One hard-line cleric and lawmaker, Mahmoud Nabavian, recently asked on social media, “is a coup underway?” Kamran Ghazanfari, another lawmaker in that camp, said in a video message the government was conspiring to keep Parliament closed and paying people to stay off the streets, “so lawmakers cannot oppose the semi coup taking place against the supreme leader.”
In the months since the war began, generals in the Revolutionary Guards have consolidated power, effectively running the country. In a sign of how decision-making has shifted from the absolute power of the father to a more collective process under the son, Iran’s vice president for executive affairs, Mohammad-Jafar Ghaempanah, recently said the new supreme leader did not have the last word.
The ayatollah’s opinion, Mr. Ghaempanah said, was like those of other officials and should be debated and considered. “If we are supposed to only implement the supreme leader’s opinions, then why do we have a Parliament and a national security council?” he said in an address to senior government leaders.
Such declarations would have been unthinkable under the former supreme leader.
Ruling in absentia
Ayatollah Khamenei’s invisibility and his inability to quiet down the fighting have raised questions inside Iran’s political circles about whether his rule in absentia is sustainable in the long term, according to the four senior Iranian officials.
The supreme leader’s biggest test so far has been his handling of the U.S. negotiations.
During the final stages of the talks, when Ayatollah Khamenei was hesitating about approving the preliminary cease-fire deal, Mr. Pezeshkian visited him, according to the four officials familiar with the details of the meeting. The president told the supreme leader that the economic situation was dire, that the U.S. naval blockade was crippling Iran, and that he would step down if he rejected the agreement, the officials said.
The head of the Central Bank, Abdolnaser Hemati, also wrote a letter to Ayatollah Khamenei saying the country was facing an acute budget crisis, and critical food and medical supplies would run out by the end of August if the naval blockade persisted, the officials said. Mr. Hemati’s letter explained that it was impossible for Iran to sell its oil and find alternative trade routes at the scale it needed.
These communications, the four officials said, were instrumental in Ayatollah Khamenei’s ultimate decision to back the agreement. In a brief public statement, he said that while he opposed the deal “on principle,” he had instructed the president to proceed if he had the Supreme National Security Council’s backing. The Council voted 12 out of 13 in favor of the deal, Mr. Pezeshkian has said.
Once the funeral ends, Ayatollah Khamenei must make important decisions on key appointments for to lead the judiciary, state broadcasting, the Basij militia force and as his chief of staff. Those decisions, said Iranian officials, will signal which side he favors. The Guards and Mr. Ghalibaf are among his closest allies and had aided his ascent, while the hard-line faction had pushed another candidate.
“We are witnessing real, tense politics, and a fight for the future of the country,” said Vali Nasr, an Iran expert and professor at Johns Hopkins University. “If the pragmatics prevail, the hard-liners will be pushed to the margins, and they are fighting it.”
