Last week, Mojtaba Khamenei was a Hojjat al-Islam, a mid-level clerical rank. When the Assembly of Experts appointed him as the new supreme leader to replace his late father, the regime elevated him by two clerical ranks to grand ayatollah. For the foreign media to accept the regime’s terms is a mistake.
The New York Times committed the most egregious of these errors. Reporter Farnaz Fassihi, who cultivates good contacts with regime insiders, preempted doubts on the younger Khamenei’s credentials, writing, “Unlike his father, Mr. Khamenei, 56, carries the full religious credentials as an ayatollah at the moment of his ascension.” These assertions may have ingratiated Fassihi to her sources and preserved her access, but they are false. First, Mojtaba is a Hojjat al-Islam, and he has never published a dissertation. Second, the full rank for the supreme leader is grand ayatollah, which even the regime media do not call him. This is important, as a simple ayatollah is, according to the Islamic Republic’s constitution, insufficient for a supreme leader.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps rebuffed the mullahs when, at gunpoint, it directed the Assembly of Experts to elect Mojtaba.
The difference matters. There are three classes in the Islamic Republic: the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, the clergy, and the people. Before the revolution, the clergy carried significant support among the people. Under Ruhollah Khomeini, the clergy became the ruling class but, with time, its influence on society eroded. This trend accelerated under Ali Khamenei, as the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps replaced the clerics as the country’s most powerful class, making Iran effectively a military dictatorship with an Islamic flavor. During Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s presidency, for example, only one member of the cabinet—the intelligence minister—had a clerical background, and he essentially had been the chaplain to the Revolutionary Guard. This has forced a reckoning among the clerical class, which now has neither popular support nor significant political power and complains that the Guard vetoes its initiatives.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps rebuffed the mullahs when, at gunpoint, it directed the Assembly of Experts to elect Mojtaba. The assembly refused to announce the results for days. Ayatollah Ahmad Alamalhoda, who is close with both the Khameneis and the Guard, warned that the Assembly has the power to elect the supreme leader but not the right to change its vote, which suggests that there was an effort among the assemblymen to vote for a second time.
On March 13, 2026, opposition outlet Iran International reported that some powerful clerics were maneuvering to strip Mojtaba of his powers. It added, “[Ali-Asghar] Hejazi and [Alireza] Arafi are also among influential clerics who have criticized the growing power of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the increasing dominance of its commanders over government decision-making during the war.”
After the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, a reporter asked then-Senator Harry S. Truman (D-Missouri) which side the United States should support. Truman responded, “If we see that Germany is winning the war, we ought to help Russia; and if that Russia is winning, we ought to help Germany, and in that way let them kill as many as possible.” In the same vein, in the conflict between the clergy and the Guard, the United States should aid the losing side—currently, the clergy, or at least those not so obviously fronting for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
The U.S. media do the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ bidding by accepting its claim that Khamenei is an ayatollah.
The regime still holds legitimacy within its own ranks by a pretense of upholding Islamic law. Exposing the supreme leader to be unqualified could lead more authentic clergy, rather than Fassihi clergy, to join forces with the people and take mosque-goers with them. At least, it could lead to withdrawing support for the regime and standing on the sidelines in the fight between the Iranian people and the Guard. Such a situation is not farfetched. Many clerics—including Khomeini’s former deputy, Grand Ayatollah Hussein Ali Montazeri, and former Isfahan Friday Prayer Leader Ayatollah Jalaluddin Taheri—have rebelled against the regime when the prerogatives of power and politics led it to undermine religious principles.
The U.S. media do the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ bidding by accepting its claim that Khamenei is an ayatollah and they likely do so either because they are unfamiliar with the Shi’ite seminary dynamics or they cynically seek to parrot the regime lines to ingratiate themselves for access. Either way, they fail to meet the journalistic standard of upholding the truth. Someone with a bachelor’s degree should not be called a doctor, even if he rules over a country. A freshman in college is not a tenured department chair, even if his father had been.
It is an imperative to continue to call the new supreme leader Hojjat al-Islam Khamenei because that is what he is. Doing so will also expose him as an unqualified fraud, and it reminds the world and policymakers that this regime suffers from internal frictions and hypocrisy that not only the West, but also the Iranian people can use against it.
