Mojtaba Khamenei has not appeared in public since early March, more than three months after being named Iran's supreme leader and wounded in the 28 February strike that killed his father. He has governed since through written statements relayed by state media. Pakistan's interior minister Mohsin Naqvi carried dual civilian and military letters to him in Tehran on 6-7 June; more than three months on, no public response has come, and the MOU reportedly still waits on his word.
Thomas Juneau of the Stimson Center and analysts at The Soufan Center assess that IRGC commanders now hold day-to-day authority over the war, exceeding the supreme leader's. The Naqvi channel, on that reading, routes letters to a figure who may no longer be the decision node, while the corps acts on its own initiative. Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, the civilian negotiator, has been overruled by the corps before.
The Hormuz closure supplies the proof. A military command that can shut the strait the same week its government's mediators are pressing for a deal is the command that decides whether any deal holds, whatever the absent leader eventually signs. The question is no longer whether Tehran wants an agreement; it is whether the part of Tehran that wants one can deliver the part that is fighting.
