The 1989 film “Weekend at Bernie’s” was campy. Critics panned it, but over time, it achieved cult status. The premise was simple: Two young workers at an insurance firm discover fraud; to reward them, their boss invites them to the Hamptons. The catch? The boss himself was corrupt. Before his guests arrived, the mob murdered him. Not wanting to give up the good life, the protagonists decide to pretend their boss is still alive.
In the Islamic Republic, life imitates art. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, killed on the first morning of Operation Epic Fury, was corrupt. His son, Mojtaba, was his consigliere. Perhaps he alone knew where his father’s conglomerate stashed Iran’s diverted wealth, by some accounts totaling more than $95 billion, and perhaps exceeding $200 billion.
Neither Iranian presidents nor foreign ministers have ever wielded power; their jobs were to be window dressing.
Nor was Khamenei alone in profiting off the Iranian people. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, too, assembled a portfolio worth upwards of $100 billion.
If Mojtaba is permanently incapacitated or dead—and there is no evidence he is alive and well—then what a few legacy politicians and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps are doing is essentially bringing an Iranian version of the 1989 film to life. Neither Iranian presidents nor foreign ministers have ever wielded power; their jobs were to be window dressing and distract the naïve, gullible or, in the case of the National Iranian American Council, complicit. While Western politicians lauded Iranian President Mohammad Khatami’s “Dialogue of Civilizations,” for example, and President Bill Clinton buried the FBI investigation finding Iran responsible for the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing, Khatami’s tenure coincided with the rapid expansion of Iran’s then-covert enrichment program.
By essentially dragging Mojtaba around to their party, in name if not in body, Iranian politicians can try to infuse their own personal agendas and desire for power with legitimacy. Mojtaba has become Schrödinger’s ayatollah; his power comes from the uncertainty about whether he is alive or dead.
Rather than negotiate with men acting in his name—Parliamentary Speaker Mohammad Bagher-Ghalibaf and Ahmad Vahidi—or those who never had power, like President Masoud Pezeshkian and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, President Donald Trump should condition any agreement or negotiation on proof of life and explicit endorsement by Mojtaba.
If that becomes impossible because Mojtaba is little more than a hidden cadaver, then so be it. There is a pattern in which the United States wins the war but loses the diplomacy that follows. To lose to a corpse, however, would be a new low, the equivalent of an election in which a candidate dies weeks before election day but still wins.
The Central Intelligence Agency, or the politicians to whom it provides its reports, continues to leak findings designed to embarrass Trump. CIA reports are notoriously arbitrary. Analysts reflect their biases yet, unlike journalists, academics, and think tank observers, they remain shielded from criticisms beyond their bubbles, due to the classified nature of their reports, which often have less to do with sources and methods and more to do with a desire to avoid criticism. The leaks are less significant in their substance than they are in how they reflect the leakers’ willingness to bolster Iran’s willingness to resist and undermine U.S. morale.
If Mojtaba is dead, no Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps faction may have the ability to compromise.
What the CIA reports do not reflect, however, is who remains in charge in Iran and which politicians or officials claim the voice of Mojtaba. If U.S. officials like Steve Witkoff are meeting with Ghalibaf or Araghchi but neither man can control Mojtaba’s voice, then that suggests they are not the power brokers who can deliver. What Witkoff does is the equivalent of negotiating a real estate deal not with the owner of a Manhattan skyscraper, but instead with the homeless panhandler outside its front door.
There is a danger in truth. If Mojtaba is dead, no Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps faction may have the ability to compromise, fearing rivals would seek advantage. That may be a bad dynamic, but U.S. national security requires dealing with reality. In such a case, the United States must declare an end to the Islamic Republic and recognize it is dealing with a military dictatorship, a failed Somalia-like state governed by multiple warlords, or wait until authorities choose a new clerical leader, one who has religious credentials rather than rigor mortis.
“Weekend at Bernie’s” had a sequel four years after its original flopped, as mobsters sought the money Bernie embezzled. Trump may be bored with his war, but he should avoid any sequel to “Weekend at Mojtaba’s.” It is time to end the fiction and recognize the impact on Trump’s legacy if he loses a conflict to a corpse.
