For those still unfamiliar with the peculiar eschaton of the Iranian regime’s cultish subsect of Shi’a Islam, the entire raison d’etre of the Islamic Republic is to hasten the end of the world to produce its messiah. The Qom mullahs believe that the Twelfth Imam has already come to the world but remains hidden until a global war obliterates all opposition to Islam. The mullahs have survived for nearly a half-century on the claims of divine authority to immanentize this eschaton, which will result in a global Islamic empire based in Tehran.
With that in mind, the need to prevent Iran’s regime from acquiring or developing nuclear weapons becomes blindingly obvious to everyone except Barack Obama, John Kerry, and Rob Malley. Unlike with regimes more interested in secular power, there is no mutually-assured destruction (MAD) deterrent in this scenario. The mullahs want a full-blown nuclear war as a means to eternal power – a non-rational objective pursued by rational means.
And that’s our entrée to today’s deeeeeep question: Did the mullahs actually achieve a reverse Twelfth Imam? Amit Segal raises the possibility in the Free Press today. Iran keeps insisting that Nepo Babytollah Mojtaba Khamenei is still alive and serving as Supreme Leader, only with such tight security that even the IRGC leadership has no immediate access to him. Segal reports that Israeli intelligence has grown increasingly skeptical of this claim, and that the IRGC may have buried Mojtaba in more than just secrecy:
But within Israeli intelligence, a much colder, simpler theory is taking root: Khamenei is already dead. All that fantastic, detailed intel—even the candid admissions of severe injury in The New York Times—is carefully calibrated Iranian disinformation.
There is a precedent for this vanishing act: The ultimate messianic figure in Shi’ite theology is, after all, the Hidden Imam. The irony here is rich. The entire theological foundation of the Iranian regime rests on the idea of earthly “stewardship” until this Hidden Imam reappears. Now that Khamenei has seemingly joined him in hiding, the regime is left stewarding a doubly empty chair.
This theological cosplay not only buys the regime time to prevent an all-out succession war but also explains why the political echelon is suddenly allowing itself to compromise far more than the directives supposedly coming down from the “Supreme Leader” would plausibly allow. If the Supreme Leader is already pushing up Iranian daisies, he may remain in a bureaucratic state of life until it becomes in someone’s political interest to pull the sheet off the body.
The answer to “Where in the world is Mojtaba Khamenei?” may very well be underground—just in a fashion that doesn’t necessitate bunker busters.
Readers here know my skepticism about the Carboardatollah’s respiratory status. It has been nearly three months since I began pointing out how very, very convenient it would be for the IRGC to prop up a corpse as Supreme Leader under its control. Mojtaba has always been the IRGC’s creature anyway, and even before the war began, had attempted to maneuver him into direct succession to his father. Ali Khamenei resisted the idea of hereditary succession, but the Israelis opened up that possibility by getting Ali out of the way in the first minute of the war.
The New York Times reported yesterday that regime sources claim Mojtaba is still alive and acting as a “manager” of the state. Supposedly, his lips are burned off, he’s missing a leg, and he’s so disfigured that the IRGC can’t offer a proof-of-life video … and yet the sources claim that he’s acting as Supreme Leader anyway. IRGC officials can’t access him lest they allow the US and Israelis to track Mojtaba down, but supposedly Masoud Pezeshkian consults with him in person.
Needless to say, this is nonsense. If Iran has a Supreme Leader still making the strategic decisions, Mojtaba would be on hand to deal directly with both the IRGC and the civilian wing of the Islamic Republic. In that scenario, there would be no confusion and contradiction between Iran’s positions in Islamabad and their actions in Tehran. Even if Mojtaba were alive, he’s clearly not acting as a Supreme Leader in the structure created by Ruhollah Khomeini and continued by Ali Khamenei.
So why bother to prop up a dead man? It brings us back to the purpose of the Islamic Republic: to act as a theocratic Islamic state to bring forth the Mahdi. That has to be accomplished under divine authority, not merely a military junta. If there is no Supreme Leader and no mullah council – and the Assembly of Experts has been as AWOL as Mojtaba since the strike on their HQ in early March – there is no divine authority. All that’s left is brute-force power, and brute-force power breeds rivalries, fractures, and rebellions. With the blockade strangling the IRGC’s military-industrial power and economy and the US and Israel destroying the IRGC’s warmaking infrastructure, any admission that Iran is on a mission from Ahmad Vahidi rather than Allah would be fatal in several directions.
Right now, the IRGC needs the Nepo Babytollah more than they need the Twelfth Imam. That may force them to cut a deal with the US, although at the moment, there’s no indication that the IRGC will back down from its maximalist stands. They may end up putting themselves in the same place as Mojtaba … buried in the sands of time, never to return.
Update: This probably fits better on my earlier post, but this one’s closer to the top. According to an IRGC-run media outlet, Iran will not talk with American negotiators in Islamabad:
BREAKING: Iran has reportedly decided not to enter negations with the US currently, per Tasnim
— unusual_whales (@unusual_whales) April 24, 2026
It’s probably just as well. The IRGC won’t allow them to discuss any of our terms anyway. Trump can get back to the shock-and-awe moves he held back in the first rounds of the war.
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