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Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has become the dominant force in the country’s wartime decision-making two months into the war with the U.S. and Israel, narrowing the role of the supreme leader and hardening Tehran’s stance as it weighs renewed talks with Washington.
The shift follows the killing of Ali Khamenei on the first day of the war and the rise of his wounded son, Mojtaba Khamenei, according to a Reuters report based on Iranian officials, analysts and people familiar with internal deliberations.
Since its establishment in 1979, the Islamic Republic has centered power around a supreme leader with final authority over major state decisions. But the current wartime order is now dominated by commanders of the IRGC and marked by the absence of a single, decisive clerical authority, the report said.
Mojtaba Khamenei remains formally at the top of Iran’s system, but three people familiar with internal discussions said his role is largely to legitimize decisions made by generals rather than issue direct orders himself.
Wartime pressure has concentrated power in a narrower, harder-line circle rooted in the Supreme National Security Council, the supreme leader’s office and the IRGC, which now dominates military strategy and key political decisions, Iranian officials and analysts said.
A senior Pakistani government official briefed on peace talks between Iran and the U.S., which Islamabad has been mediating, said Tehran’s responses have been slow.
“The Iranians are painfully slow in their response,” the official said. “There is apparently no one decision-making command structure. At times, it takes them two to three days to respond.”
Analysts said the main obstacle to a deal is not internal infighting in Tehran, but the gap between what Washington is prepared to offer and what Iran’s hardline Guards are willing to accept.
Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has served as Iran’s diplomatic face in talks with the U.S. He has more recently been joined by parliament speaker Mohammed Baqer Ghalibaf, a former Guards commander, Tehran mayor and presidential candidate.
Ghalibaf has emerged during the war as a key link between Iran’s political, security and clerical elites.
On the ground, however, the central interlocutor has been IRGC commander Ahmad Vahidi, according to a Pakistani source and two Iranian sources who identified him as Iran’s pivotal figure, including on the night a ceasefire was announced.
Mojtaba Khamenei was severely injured in the opening Israeli and U.S. strike that killed his father and other relatives. Two people close to his inner circle said he was left disfigured with serious leg wounds, has not appeared publicly and communicates through IRGC aides or limited audio links because of security constraints.
Iran’s foreign ministry did not immediately reply to a request for comment on the issues raised in the report. Iranian officials have previously denied divisions over negotiations with the U.S.
Iran submitted a new proposal to Washington on Monday, according to senior Iranian sources.
The proposal envisions staged talks, with the nuclear issue set aside at the start until the war ends and disputes over Gulf shipping are resolved. Washington insists the nuclear issue must be addressed from the outset.
“Neither side wants to negotiate,” said Alan Eyre, an Iran expert and former U.S. diplomat.
Eyre said both sides believe time will weaken the other: Iran through leverage over Hormuz, and Washington through economic pressure and a blockade.
For now, he said, neither side can afford to bend. Iran’s IRGC is wary of appearing weak to Washington, while U.S. President Donald Trump faces pressure ahead of the midterm elections and has little room for flexibility without political cost.
“For either, flexibility would be seen as weakness,” Eyre said.
Insiders said Mojtaba Khamenei is formally Iran’s ultimate authority, but described him as a figure of assent rather than command.
They said he endorses outcomes shaped through institutional consensus rather than imposing his own authority. Real power, according to the insiders, has moved to a unified wartime leadership centered on the Supreme National Security Council.
“Important deals probably pass through him,” Iranian analyst Arash Azizi said. “But I can’t see him overruling the National Security Council. How could he go against those running the war effort?”
Hardline figures such as former nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili and a group of radical members of parliament have raised their profile with forceful wartime rhetoric. But they lack the institutional power to derail decisions or shape outcomes, according to the report.
Mojtaba Khamenei owes his elevation to the Guards, who sidelined pragmatists and backed him as a reliable guardian of their hardline agenda, sources familiar with Iran’s inner policymaking circles said.
The Guards, already strengthened by the war, are expected to signal a more aggressive foreign policy and tighter domestic repression, the sources said.
The Guards see their mission as preserving the Islamic Republic at home while projecting deterrence abroad.
That approach, often shared by hardliners across the judiciary and clerical establishment, prioritizes centralized control and resistance to Western pressure, particularly on nuclear policy and Iran’s regional reach.
In practice, the Guards’ ideology shapes strategy, while decision-making rests firmly in their hands. With the country at war and Ali Khamenei gone, people close to internal discussions said no actor inside the system has the power or scope to resist them.
The choice facing Iran’s leadership is no longer between moderate and hardline policy, but between hardline and an even harder line, two Iranian sources close to power circles said. A small faction may favor pushing further, but the Guards have so far kept that impulse in check, they said.
Aaron David Miller, a former U.S. negotiator, said the shift marks a decisive reordering of power from clerical primacy to security dominance.
“We’ve gone from divine power to hard power,” Miller said. “From the influence of the clerics to the influence of the Revolutionary Guard Corps. This is how Iran is being governed.”
Alex Vatanka, senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, said differences of opinion exist but decision-making has consolidated around security institutions, with Mojtaba Khamenei acting as a central convening figure rather than a lone decision-maker.
Despite sustained military and economic pressure from the U.S. and Israel, Iran has shown no signs of fracture or capitulation nearly nine weeks into the war, according to the report.
Miller said there is no evidence of fundamental rifts within the system or meaningful opposition on the streets.
That cohesion suggests command now rests with the Guards and security services, which appear to be driving the war rather than merely carrying it out.
Miller said a strategic consensus has emerged: avoid a return to full-scale war, preserve leverage, especially over the Strait of Hormuz, and emerge from the conflict politically, economically and militarily stronger.
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