A leader without a face, a leader without a voice, three months after Ali Khamenei was killed in a US and Israeli strike.
For more than two months in Tehran, a leader has sat on the throne who has not appeared in public even once. “Sayyid Mojtaba Khamenei,” the new Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic, is a name we occasionally see beneath a few messages.
The media publishes his written messages in various graphic formats. The latest of these were released on May 15 and May 20. In these writings, he generally refers to the people on the streets as epic-makers and calls upon them to show resistance and steadfastness against the “enemy.” These messages, which blend religious-revolutionary rhetoric with formal state prose, have generally been issued to mark calendar occasions.
In the more than two months since he was selected as Supreme Leader, he has released at least 17 written messages. A portion of every single one of these messages is linked to the war. Across this collection of texts, the word “Iran” is repeated 60 times, “nation” (mellat) 52 times, “Islamic” 52 times, “people” 44 times, “his/their honor” (ishan) 39 times, “you” 39 times, “we” 40 times, “enemy” 34 times, “war” 28 times, “martyrdom” 24 times, “resistance” 22 times, and “army” 19 times. This pattern of repetition indicates an effort to consolidate a religious nationalism against the enemy.
