Claimed meeting of Mohseni-Ejei with Mojtaba Khamenei, again without a single image

The Fars news agency, affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and Tasnim claimed on Saturday, 24 October 2026, that Gholamhossein Mohseni-Ejei, the head of the judiciary, had met Mojtaba Khamenei, the Islamic Republic's leader. No photo, video or audio file of the meeting was released with the report.

According to these outlets, the meeting discussed increasing the regime's "social capital" through justice and public rights, fighting corruption, speeding up the handling of cases, holding to account officials whose negligence led to crimes, and pursuing damages that Islamic Republic officials attribute to the United States and Israel.

Eight months without an image or a voice

Since Mojtaba Khamenei succeeded his father in February–March 2026, no new image or recording of his voice has been released, and media inside the country have only attributed written messages to him. Masoud Pezeshkian and Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf had previously also claimed to have met him, and no images of those meetings were released either.

Even Mohseni-Ejei's reappointment as head of the judiciary in June–July was announced with a written decree and a text message attributed to the Islamic Republic's leader, not at an in-person meeting of which an image exists.

The question of who makes the decisions

The long absence of the Islamic Republic's leader, at a time when the regime is at war with the United States and under a naval blockade, has made the question of who is taking the main decisions more pressing. In these same months, Mohsen Rezaei has risen to the top of security decision-making and the signs of a power struggle within the regime have multiplied. Mohseni-Ejei himself has in past years headed the apparatus that issued the death sentences against protesters of the Dey uprising.

For almost eight months, the Islamic Republic has not released a single new image of its leader.