The most consequential figure in Iran’s war effort may be its least visible. United States intelligence agencies have concluded that Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, despite suffering grievous wounds in the opening hours of the American-Israeli campaign, continues to shape both battlefield tactics and the stalled negotiations with Washington. According to multiple sources familiar with the classified assessments, the precise chain of command inside a now-fractured Iranian regime remains opaque, but Khamenei is believed to be working alongside senior officials to direct how Tehran prosecutes the war and talks to end it.

Khamenei has not been seen in public since the strikes that killed his father, former Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, and several other senior figures on February 28. American intercepts and satellite imagery, the sources say, cannot visually confirm his whereabouts. Iranian officials insist he is in good health, with a close aide describing only minor injuries to a kneecap and lower back. Yet the intelligence paints a darker picture: severe burns to one side of his body, encompassing face, arm, torso and leg, have forced him into isolation. The contradiction between Tehran’s official narrative and Washington’s reporting underscores the information war that shadows the physical one.

Viewing the situation from Washington, analysts frame Khamenei’s continued grip on strategy as both a stabiliser and a wild card. His survival lends continuity to a regime reeling from decapitation strikes, but his physical seclusion raises questions about the reliability of command-and-control. European diplomats, watching from London and Paris, note that the opacity of Iran’s decision-making complicates any diplomatic off-ramp: negotiating partners cannot be certain they are dealing with the full spectrum of authority. Meanwhile, within Iran, competing centres of power—the Revolutionary Guards, the president’s office, the clerical establishment—are jostling for influence in what one assessment calls a “now divided” system.

The forward trajectory hinges on whether Khamenei’s role is a genuine exercise of authority or a carefully managed fiction designed to project stability. If he is indeed directing negotiations, any ceasefire deal will require his tacit endorsement. If he is incapacitated, the regime may be drifting toward an internal power struggle at the worst possible moment. For now, the man who inherited the mantle of the Islamic Republic steers from the shadows, but the question of how long he can do so—and how much longer the world will have to guess—remains unanswered.