Who’s Really Running Iran?

What It Covers

NYT correspondent Farnaz Fassihi reports on a fundamental power shift inside Iran, where Revolutionary Guards generals — not Supreme Leader Moshtaba Khamenei — now control decision-making. Based on 22 interviews with senior Iranian officials and insiders, the episode maps who holds power and what they want from U.S. negotiations.

Key Questions Answered

• •Power structure shift: Iran's Revolutionary Guards, known as Sepah, have displaced clerical authority as the dominant decision-making force. Every source Fassihi interviewed named the Guards — not the Ayatollah — as running the country. This marks a historic transition from a 47-year Islamic theocracy toward a military dictatorship with a cleric as figurehead.
• •Supreme Leader's incapacitation: Moshtaba Khamenei sustained severe injuries in airstrikes — a possible leg amputation, arm surgery, and extensive facial burns preventing speech. He communicates via handwritten letters carried by human courier chains, making real-time governance impossible and forcing him to delegate authority to Guards generals he has trusted since adolescence.
• •Guards' pragmatic deal calculus: Unlike ideologically driven clerics, Guards generals are motivated by power and economic survival, not religious doctrine. They have proposed, for the first time in 47 years, allowing U.S. oil and shipping companies to invest in Iran's reconstruction — directly appealing to Trump's deal-making instincts to secure sanctions relief and access to frozen assets.
• •Strait of Hormuz as leverage: Iran's leadership now views the Strait of Hormuz as a controllable economic weapon. Beyond military blockade, they are calculating a tolling system on passing ships, projecting it could generate more revenue than oil exports. Insurance market pressure alone — without physical action — is sufficient to disrupt global shipping and energy supply chains.
• •Face-saving as the core negotiating obstacle: Both sides require a deal framed as a victory. Iran refuses to appear as though war forced concessions it previously rejected. Trump needs to demonstrate outcomes exceeding Obama's 2015 nuclear agreement. Uranium enrichment levels, stockpile disposal, and suspension versus full shutdown remain unresolved, with optics driving the deadlock as much as substance.