Iran International
Since becoming Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei has repeatedly used ba’sat, a term rooted in divine mission, to cast Iranians not just as citizens but as a force tasked with carrying forward the Islamic Republic’s project at home and beyond.
Around 20 messages and written statements have been issued in Mojtaba Khamenei’s name since the Assembly of Experts named him Iran’s new Supreme Leader on March 8.
Some have been routine: condolences, formal greetings and remarks for official occasions. But at least half go further, offering an early view of his political and ideological vocabulary.
They cover a wide range of subjects, from the army, parliament and the Persian language to Hajj, Shiite’s anniversary of Eid al-Ghadir, the Persian Gulf, the US-Iran memorandum of understanding and the so-called Axis of Resistance.
Read together, one word stands out: ba’sat (be’that).
In Islamic tradition, ba’sat refers to being chosen and sent on a divine mission. It is most closely associated with prophethood: the moment a prophet is commissioned to carry a message and fulfill a sacred duty.
In Mojtaba Khamenei’s messages, however, the word is not used only as a religious expression. It becomes a political language for describing the role of the people.
A sacred word enters politics
Mojtaba Khamenei has used ba’sat in several forms: the ba’sat of the Iranian nation, the ba’sat of the people, the ba’sat of artists, a mission-bearing nation and even a commissioned Islamic ummah.
The ummah, in Islamic political language, refers to the wider Muslim community beyond national borders.
In this framework, Iranians are not presented merely as citizens of a country, voters in a political system or supporters of the Islamic Republic.
They are described as bearers of a historical mission. That is where ba’sat becomes politically important.
It casts the people as the human force of a larger ideological project, rather than simply as a society expected to support the government.
The first clear example appeared in Mojtaba Khamenei’s Hajj message in late May.
He wrote that after the killing of Ali Khamenei, the Iranian nation experienced a divine ba’sat and astonished the world by appearing wherever its presence was needed.
The more revealing line came later. Following the ba’sat of the Iranian nation and the Axis of Resistance, he wrote, the ba’sat of the Islamic ummah would follow.
In a single sequence, he linked the Iranian people, Tehran’s regional network of allied forces and the wider Muslim world.
The message was not only that Iranians had awakened. It was that they had been assigned a role in a project extending beyond Iran’s borders.
People or a mission-bearing nation?
The same pattern appears in other messages. In a statement marking Ferdowsi Day, artists were asked to carry out their own ba’sat in continuation of the people’s ba’sat, and to record the story of this uprising for history.
In a message marking the start of the third year of the 12th parliament, the legislature was told to bring itself into line with a mission-bearing nation.
The chain is revealing.
The mission begins with the people, moves into culture and art, enters formal institutions such as parliament, and is then projected outward toward the Islamic ummah and the Axis of Resistance.
This is not just ceremonial language. In Mojtaba Khamenei’s early vocabulary, the people are not treated simply as a source of legitimacy or as a crowd mobilized for elections, funerals and rallies.
They are framed as a force expected to move the system forward.
That role is tied to resistance against the United States and Israel, support for Tehran’s regional allies, and the claim that Iran is helping shape a new regional and global order.
People inside an old project
This language also connects Mojtaba Khamenei to one of Ali Khamenei’s central ideological themes.
For years, the former Supreme Leader spoke of a five-stage process leading to a new Islamic civilization.
In that theory, the Islamic Revolution was only the beginning.
It was to be followed by an Islamic system, an Islamic government, an Islamic society and, finally, a new Islamic civilization.
Institutions alone were never enough for that project. The theory required society itself to be transformed, with people seeing themselves not merely as subjects of a government but as participants in a long ideological struggle.
Mojtaba Khamenei’s use of ba’sat appears to supply that missing human engine.
If Ali Khamenei’s five-stage theory was the roadmap, ba’sat is Mojtaba Khamenei’s way of describing the people expected to carry it forward.
The Iranian nation becomes mission-bearing. Artists must narrate that mission. Parliament must adjust itself to it. The Axis of Resistance gives it regional depth. And the Islamic ummah gives it a transnational horizon.
Resistance remains central
This is why ba’sat matters beyond the number of times it appears.
Terms such as resistance, America, Israel and the Iranian nation have long been central to the Islamic Republic’s political vocabulary.
Ba’sat does something more specific. It redefines the relationship between people and power.
In this view, people are not only expected to obey, vote, mourn, rally or endure.
They are said to have been commissioned into a larger project, one that links domestic loyalty to regional confrontation and an imagined future order.
In Mojtaba Khamenei’s first message after becoming Supreme Leader, he described the Axis of Resistance as an inseparable part of the values of the Islamic Revolution.
In later messages, he returned to Lebanon, Palestine, Iraq and Yemen.
After the US-Iran memorandum, he said he had initially opposed the agreement but allowed its implementation because the president and the Supreme National Security Council had pledged to protect both the rights of the Iranian nation and those of the Axis of Resistance.
In his Persian Gulf message, he linked the policy of resistance and a strong Iran to the beginning of a new regional and global order.
Mojtaba Khamenei is not abandoning the ideological architecture of his predecessor. He is recasting it in a new vocabulary, with the people placed more explicitly at the center of the mission.
If this reading is correct, ba’sat is more than a religious flourish.
It may be the connecting term between the second and third leaders of the Islamic Republic: a word that preserves Ali Khamenei’s project of a new Islamic civilization while giving Mojtaba Khamenei a language of his own.
The result is not an ideological break. It is an effort to continue the same project with a sharper definition of the people’s role in it: not simply as supporters of the Islamic Republic, but as a people told they have been given a mission.
Iran's Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei plans to remove judiciary chief Gholam-Hossein Mohseni Eje'i at the end of his first five-year term and appoint a new figure to lead the judiciary, sources familiar with the matter told Iran International.
Sources inside Iran told Iran International that Khamenei does not intend to extend Eje'i’s term for another five years, breaking with a practice followed for nearly four decades in which judiciary chiefs have usually served two consecutive five-year terms.
The sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the decision is not aimed at judicial reform but is part of a broader reshaping of power after the recent war.
They said the new supreme leader is seeking to replace key officials in major state institutions with figures more closely aligned with him.
Eje'i’s expected removal could mark one of the first major signs of Khamenei’s effort to rebuild control over the Islamic Republic’s judicial, security and political apparatus after the transfer of power.
Hardliners step up pressure on Eje'i
The decision comes amid growing criticism of Eje'i from hardline figures after the names of Supreme National Security Council members who voted in favor of a memorandum of understanding with the United States were disclosed.
Critics say Eje'i’s vote was at odds with Khamenei’s stated position, after the leader said in a letter that he had, in principle, held a different view on the memorandum of understanding.
Signs of dissatisfaction with Eje'i’s five-year record have also appeared in recent official and semi-official commentary close to the power structure.
In a message marking Judiciary Week, Khamenei did not clearly endorse Eje'i’s continuation in office. Instead, he addressed the judiciary as an institution and called for the “actualization” of demands previously made by former Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
The message repeated calls for the implementation of the judicial transformation document, fighting corruption inside the judiciary, reviving public rights, blocking the use of recommendations and lobbying, and improving communication with the public.
Eje'i seeks to defend his record
A day later, Eje'i published a letter to Khamenei in deferential language, defending the judiciary’s performance and pledging to continue the path of “judicial transformation.”
“I and all components of the judiciary consider ourselves obliged to carry out Your Excellency’s binding commands precisely, swiftly and without any reduction,” Eje'i wrote.
Media outlets and figures close to the establishment criticized Eje'i for not publishing such a letter before Khamenei’s message. Some also described the new leader’s renewed emphasis on his father’s demands as a negative assessment of Eje'i’s record, arguing that their repetition showed the judiciary had failed to deliver practical results under him.
Rival factions inside the establishment have also stepped up attacks on Eje'i, accusing him of distancing himself from the leadership’s demands.
Media close to Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf and President Masoud Pezeshkian have described the attacks as part of an effort by the faction aligned with Saeed Jalili, a member of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, and the Paydari Front to create divisions among senior officials and weaken the postwar political path.
Media close to the judiciary and Eje'i’s supporters have sought to portray his five-year record as successful, citing reduced imprisonment, electronic court proceedings, shorter trials, anti-corruption efforts and public outreach.
Rights groups point to record of repression
Human rights groups and activists say Eje'i is not a reformist figure but a long-standing part of the Islamic Republic’s repressive judicial and security apparatus.
They point to his record in the Special Clerical Court, the Ministry of Intelligence, and later as first deputy and head of the judiciary, saying his tenure has been marked by continued heavy sentences against protesters, political activists, journalists, prisoners of conscience and minorities.
Rights advocates say the judiciary under Eje'i has continued to act as the legal and executive arm of security institutions in political and security cases.
They also argue that replacing Eje'i alone would not bring meaningful change without structural reform, an end to security interference in judicial cases, guaranteed access to lawyers, a halt to forced confessions, the annulment of political verdicts and respect for fair trial standards.
Tehran’s unveiling of a towering statue depicting the Roman Emperor Valerian kneeling before pre-Islamic Persian King Shapur I has renewed criticism of the Islamic Republic’s appeal to nationalist sentiment following the June war with Israel.
For over forty years, the theocracy purged ancient Persian history from schoolbooks, replacing it with post-Islamic narratives. But after the 12-day conflict with Israel, officials have turned to the distant pre-Islamic past to rally a divided society.
From murals of ancient kings and soldiers to patriotic songs added to Shi’ite mourning ceremonies performed before Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, Tehran now embraces imagery once deemed heretical by its own revolutionary ethos.
'Kneel before Iran' campaign
Tehran’s Revolution (Enghelab) Square was the scene of an unusual spectacle on Friday as officials unveiled a massive bronze statue depicting Roman Emperor Valerian kneeling in submission before Sassanid King Shapur I, commemorating Iran’s victory at the Battle of Edessa (260 AD).
The event was held under the slogan “Kneel before Iran,” part of what authorities describe as a campaign to project “national unity and historical pride” following the June war with Israel.
Tehran Mayor Alireza Zakani, a staunch ultraconservative, said on X: “Enmity with Great Iran can only end in kneeling before this historic nation.”
Municipal official Davood Goodarzi said the installation would be accompanied by visual displays depicting “other victories of Iranians over foreign aggressors,” including the defeat of British forces by local commander Rais-Ali Delvari, Mirza Kuchak Khan’s resistance against Russian troops, and Surena’s triumph over Rome at the Battle of Carrhae in 53 BCE.
The goal, Goodarzi said, is “strengthening concepts such as national dignity, social unity, and Iranian identity.”
The statue, he said, would remain temporarily at Revolution Square before being moved to a city gateway “where it will stand as the first emblem of Iran before diplomats and foreign visitors.”
Unveiled women were allowed to attend the unveiling ceremony—an uncommon scene at events organized by Tehran’s ultra-hardline municipality.
The turn to the pre-Islamic past
The sharp reversal also recalls remarks once made by Khamenei. In a 2011 speech, he asserted that “all the great military victories of this nation came after Islam,” dismissing pre-Islamic accounts as “things that are not documented.”
In 1987, he had said that prophets triumphed over kings such as Cyrus and that “nothing remains of these monarchs in history but names remembered with derision.”
Nevertheless, pro-government social media accounts have now gone so far as to circulate posters equating Khamenei himself with Shapur, showing him standing with a staff as Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump kneel before him. The caption reads: “You will kneel before Iran.”
'Hypocrisy'
Pro-government figures have hailed the move as a patriotic success. Conservative political reporter Hossein Saremi posted: “Today’s grand Iranian gathering showed that people and the state share one essence: Iran itself. Nothing can take our homeland away.”
Others, however, called the spectacle “hypocrisy.” Journalist Gholamhossein Pashaei wrote on X: “Every year you close Pasargadae to stop people from celebrating Cyrus Day, yet you unveil Shapur’s statue in Enghelab Square with drums and fireworks during Fatimiyya (mourning period)!”
Dissident commentator Hamid Asafi called the ceremony “a perfect snapshot of the Islamic Republic’s contradictions.”
On Telegram he wrote: “A week ago they closed Cyrus’s tomb out of fear of the crowds, and now they glorify Shapur in the same breath. The Islamic Republic fears living history but poses for selfies with its corpse.”
He added: “They know people no longer respond to rosaries and sermons. That’s why they’ve brought history back to the stage—in a controlled costume. If they can’t erase the past, they’ll try to own it.”
The irony deepened as UNESCO formally recognized Cyrus’s Charter as one of the earliest human-rights documents.
President Masoud Pezeshkian wrote on X: “Iran, the cradle of dialogue, justice, and coexistence, can still inspire peace today.”
Users swiftly replied, questioning how such pride could coexist with a government that blocks access to Cyrus’s tomb each year to those wishing to visit it on his birthday.