Iran's new supreme leader Mojtaba Khamenei, who was hastily elected by the Assembly of Experts (Iran's clerical body empowered to appoint and remove the supreme leader) within days of his father Ali Khamenei's death in a US-Israeli airstrike on 28 February 2026, has not appeared publicly since taking office. Despite his absence, analysts say the Islamic Republic remains functional because the elder Khamenei spent nearly four decades transforming what was once a personalised theocracy into a bureaucratically entrenched system of interlocking institutions. The external pressure of ongoing conflict with the United States and Israel is also acting as a unifying force, suppressing factional rivalries within Tehran's leadership that might otherwise fracture the regime. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Iran's powerful paramilitary and ideological force, has emerged as the principal beneficiary of this arrangement — effectively exercising authority in Mojtaba Khamenei's name while his invisible presence lends the decisions ideological legitimacy the regime cannot afford to abandon.