Iran’s new leadership is younger, savvier, ruthless, and even more hard-line

The death of Iran’s supreme leader on the opening day of the war raised U.S. and Israeli hopes that the regime he led — and that has held the country in an Islamic vice grip since 1979 — had been pushed to the brink of collapse.

Four months later, however, as Iran stages a belated state funeral for Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the burial rites testify instead to the Islamic republic’s survival and mark the ascendance of a new generation of leaders that is more entrenched and hard-line, according to security officials and experts.

Led by Khamenei’s son and successor, Mojtaba — who has remained in hiding since being injured in the same strike that killed his father — the new hierarchy is younger, has better command of the state’s levers of power, has gained insights from the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and is savvier about soft-power tools including diplomacy and online propaganda.

After surviving months of strikes by two of the world’s most potent militaries, the regime has emerged emboldened, officials and experts said, and remains ruthless. It reportedly has carried out a campaign of executions against domestic critics and political opponents even as it continues intermittent strikes in the Persian Gulf and flexes its control over the Strait of Hormuz.

Iran “might be weaker when it comes to its economic situation, its industries, some of its strategic capabilities,” said Raz Zimmt, head of Iran research at the Institute for National Security Studies in Israel. “But the bottom line is that we are facing a new, bolder, self-confident Iran.”

Nearly all of those now in high-ranking positions spent formative years as lieutenants in security agencies or military units responsible for crackdowns on domestic protests, arming proxy militias including Hezbollah and Hamas, and rising through the ranks of elite organizations including the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

The roster includes Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr, who has taken on the influential role of secretary of the Supreme National Security Council of Iran. He is a former Revolutionary Guard commander with deep ties to the Quds force, the IRGC branch that trains allied militias.

Ahmad Vahidi, the Revolutionary Guard’s new commander in chief, backed the violent crackdown against women’s rights protests in 2022, according to officials and experts.

Mohsen Rezaei, the new military adviser to the supreme leader, is an ardent advocate of escalation in response to any U.S. and Israeli attacks, experts said.

Even those perceived as moderates by the Trump administration were shaped by years spent in security agencies or war zones. Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, speaker of the Iranian parliament and a main representative in peace talks with the United States, served as an IRGC commander during the Iran-Iraq war.

By contrast, Iranian leaders with civilian backgrounds largely have been sidelined as part of the war-driven shake-up, officials and experts said. They include President Masoud Pezeshkian and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, who previously led talks with the United States but has seen his position and influence diminished.

The swift consolidation of power by loyalists contradicts claims by President Donald Trump that the war accomplished “regime change” and empowered pragmatists willing to acquiesce to U.S. demands.

“They have a new group of leaders,” Trump said during the Group of Seven summit in France last month. “Actually, I think they’re smart. … They’re far less radicalized, and I think they’re very, very good.”

Instead, officials and experts said that Trump’s approach — including threats to annihilate Iran’s civilization, a country of more than 90 million — has bolstered hard-liners’ claims that the country is in an existential struggle with the United States and its allies.

This has weakened the hand of moderates who were key to negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program a decade ago.

Experts and officials warn that the younger Khamenei and his inner circle probably will face a more difficult test when the war truly ends, and they confront the challenge of rebuilding Iran’s battered economy and improving conditions for its people.

The Trump administration’s agreement, in a preliminary memorandum of understanding, to release billions of dollars in frozen Iranian assets and provide other financial benefits could deliver a lifeline to Iran’s new leadership team.

The regime also faces more immediate challenges, such as demonstrating that the younger Khamenei has recovered from injuries sustained in the strike that killed his father and is capable of handling the full range of duties — including the public appearances that come with being supreme leader.

The funeral looms as a critical test of the regime’s confidence that he can be protected, and will be scrutinized by analysts at the CIA and other intelligence agencies — much as they scoured footage of Soviet parades and politburo meetings during the Cold War — for clues to the leader’s condition and the identities of others who have gained clout.

Even in peace time, Mojtaba Khamenei kept a low profile. He has been photographed in public only a handful of times, and few Iranians have heard him speak.

The war sent him deeper underground. Officials and experts said that he probably is being moved among bunkers and other secure locations to protect him from airstrikes or assassination.

The funeral, however, is the first mass public gathering since the war, creating pressure on the regime for Khamenei to appear.

“He’s the head of state. A religious leader. And it’s the funeral for his father,” said Norman Roule, a former CIA officer and an expert on Iran. “His failure to appear at his father’s funeral, mourn publicly, and project command would be interpreted by many inside Iran and abroad as evidence of his personal weakness, physical incapacity, or even death.”

An Iranian diplomat who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomacy said it was unlikely that Khamenei would appear, in part out of fear that the United States or Israel would try to kill him.

“The Iranian people first and foremost need him to be safe, so he can lead the country,” the diplomat said. “The United States and Israel have shown that they are bound by no commitments.”

Even in hiding, Khamenei is believed to be handling high-level decisions, U.S. and Middle Eastern officials said, though security precautions have meant that his decisions and statements mainly are relayed through intermediaries, creating a cumbersome dynamic.

‘It’s very clear by now that Mojtaba Khamenei is making the strategic decisions,” Zimmt said, while those below him have formed a leadership “collective” that has influence on key issues but answers to the ayatollah.

Khamenei is believed to have set boundaries for negotiations with the United States, experts said, ruling out substantive discussion of Iran’s nuclear program before a durable ceasefire took effect.

Like his father, he also has distanced himself from decisions that could backfire. He publicly expressed reservations about the MOU his government signed with the United States, for example, but allowed it to proceed citing assurances from subordinates.

He also took a shot at his U.S. counterpart. Iran had agreed to sign the memo “out of compassion and goodwill,” he said, while Trump had done so “out of desperation.”

The new leadership team supplants a generation forged by years of operating in the shadows of the resistance to the autocratic rule of the shah, followed by the chaotic 1979 revolution and its aftermath.

Those in charge now, experts said, are part of a postrevolutionary cohort who are less extreme in their religious views but equally ruthless in their willingness to use brutal force to maintain control.

Their understanding of the United States has less to do with the hostage crisis of 1979 than their front-row view of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, conflicts that went on for years but ended with the United States having achieved few of its core aims.

The new group’s more sophisticated grasp of American pressure points may account for Iran’s strategy of launching retaliatory strikes against Persian Gulf allies of the United States, as well as its halting of tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, which yielded major economic leverage.

Even after an initial ceasefire was announced in April, Iran has demonstrated that it remains willing to resume its use of military force, an aggressive stance that has helped it extract key economic concessions from the United States and allowed the regime to craft a narrative at home that it prevailed in the war.

“They are brimming with confidence,” said a European official in regular contact with Iranian officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity given the sensitivity of the matter. “They not only survived, they rediscovered the Strait of Hormuz as a big lever, and they really think that they can dictate terms.”