The rifle resting against Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s podium was never just a weapon. It was a symbol of the Islamic Republic itself—a visual fusion of religious authority and military power that has long defined Iran’s ruling system.
Now, with Khamenei gone and his successor, Mojtaba Khamenei, absent from public view, that symbol has disappeared. Analysts say the vacuum has accelerated a profound shift in Tehran, with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) increasingly eclipsing the clerical establishment at the center of power.
On Oct. 4, 2024, days after the assassination of Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah in Lebanon, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei led Friday prayers in Tehran for the first time in five years.
As he addressed worshippers, Khamenei leaned on a Russian-designed Dragunov sniper rifle that had been modified and produced in Iran.
The image was steeped in symbolism. Carrying a weapon during Friday prayers is an Iranian revolutionary tradition established by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. It also draws on an older Islamic custom in which the caliph—or ruler of the Muslim community—carries a sword during Friday prayers as a sign of readiness to defend the faith against its enemies.
After taking power, Khomeini instructed Mahmoud Taleghani, Tehran’s first Friday prayer leader following the revolution, to carry a firearm during his sermon as a symbol of Iran’s willingness to fight in defense of the revolution.
French philosopher Michel Foucault, who met Khomeini in France and visited Iran before and after the revolution, observed that some clerics had already begun carrying weapons during anti-Shah sermons in 1978.
According to journalist Asaad Haidar’s memoir Days with Imam Khomeini and the Beginnings of the Revolution, mosques also became centers for collecting weapons seized by protesters after they overran army barracks. Khomeini instructed supporters to hand over captured arms to local mosques, where committees headed by trusted clerics were later established to administer neighborhoods across Iran’s major cities.
Although some revolutionaries proposed reviving the traditional practice of carrying a sword, Taleghani ultimately appeared with a German-made G3 rifle during his Friday sermons. The weapon was not necessarily loaded. Its purpose was symbolic—to project the Islamic Republic’s readiness to fight.
Khamenei’s October 2024 appearance—his last Friday sermon before his death—followed the same tradition. The rifle underscored his determination to lead Iran through a period of mounting confrontation and signaled the country’s readiness, under his leadership, to retaliate against its enemies.
The symbolism carried particular weight in Iran’s Shiite political culture, where the supreme leader embodies both religious legitimacy and military command. Careful observers even noted that the prayer podium had been modified with a slot resembling a sword sheath, allowing the rifle to stand upright beside him.
Khamenei’s assassination on Feb. 28 removed more than the country’s highest political and religious authority. It also stripped away one of the Islamic Republic’s most enduring symbols: the image of a supreme leader who united clerical authority with armed power.
That fusion of religion and force extends beyond the office of the supreme leader. A number of Iran’s clerics have appeared carrying weapons, particularly during periods of heightened tension, although the practice has become less prominent during calmer times.
Khamenei himself frequently delivered Friday sermons without a rifle. Yet dozens of official photographs over the years depicted him leaning on one—a recurring reminder of the Islamic Republic’s dual identity as both a religious state and a revolutionary military power.
Saudi Al Moulla, a researcher and professor of political sociology, says the practice has an explicit religious basis in Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s jurisprudential work Tahrir al-Wasilah.
“Khomeini wrote that it is recommended for the Friday prayer leader to deliver the sermon while standing and leaning on a sword, a staff, a weapon, or anything else that lends dignity and helps him remain standing,” Al Moulla told MBN.
That passage, he said, became the religious justification for replacing the traditional sword with a modern rifle—a symbolic adaptation of an older Islamic practice.
“The weapon serves two purposes,” Al Moulla said. “One is practical, helping the preacher maintain his posture. The other is symbolic: projecting the strength of religion and the power of the state. Today’s Iranian leadership uses the rifle to send both political and military deterrence messages.”
Since Khamenei’s assassination and the appointment of his son, Mojtaba Khamenei, as supreme leader, that defining image of Iran’s highest authority carrying a weapon has vanished entirely, even as the Islamic Republic confronts what officials describe as an existential war.
Mojtaba Khamenei has not appeared publicly in photographs, videos or even audio recordings. Officials attributed his absence to severe injuries, although speculation over his fate has continued. U.S. President Donald Trump has publicly said he believes there is a “90 percent chance” that Mojtaba is dead.
Whatever the reason, analysts say the disappearance of Iran’s supreme leader from public view has deprived the system of one of its most potent symbols: a leader who embodies both the religious authority of the turban and the coercive power of the gun.
Other clerics have attempted to fill the symbolic void.
In the weeks following Ali Khamenei’s assassination, Friday prayer leaders in Tehran and other Iranian cities appeared wearing military uniforms and carrying Kalashnikov rifles during their sermons, signaling the clerical establishment’s readiness for war and retaliation.
But observers say those gestures cannot replace the authority projected by the supreme leader himself. In his absence, they argue, the balance of power has shifted decisively toward the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Iran’s military establishment, leaving the clergy increasingly overshadowed by the security apparatus.
Al Moulla argues that the Islamic Republic has entered an unprecedented phase of militarization, with the Revolutionary Guards emerging as the country’s dominant political and security actor.
“The Revolutionary Guards have become the strongest institution and the effective center of political and military decision-making,” he said. “The Islamic Republic has increasingly evolved into a political-security system ruled by the military, operating behind a pragmatic civilian façade represented by President Masoud Pezeshkian and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi.”
Yet Al Moulla, who witnessed the Iranian Revolution firsthand, believes the country’s growing militarization faces significant domestic constraints.
“Iranian society has consistently shown an aversion to military rule,” he said, pointing to recent elections in which candidates with Revolutionary Guard backgrounds have struggled to gain broad public support.
The only former Guards officer to reach the presidency was Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2005, he noted, and the disputed 2009 election that secured his second term sparked the Green Movement protests—the largest challenge to the Islamic Republic since the revolution.
Mojtaba Khamenei’s formal appointment as supreme leader has therefore done little to restore the centralized authority associated with the office. His prolonged absence, Al Moulla said, has instead accelerated the militarization of Iranian decision-making and encouraged the emergence of a de facto collective leadership dominated by the Revolutionary Guards and pragmatic conservatives.
The shift marks a significant departure from a system built around what Al Moulla described as the supreme leader’s role as the country’s “absolute first man,” the final authority over both political and military affairs.
Iran’s leadership now appears more fragmented. The Revolutionary Guards wield growing influence over security and strategic policy, while civilian figures manage diplomacy and the machinery of government. The clerical institution remains formally paramount, but the supreme leader who is supposed to embody it is largely invisible.
The central challenge for this hybrid leadership, Al Moulla said, will be its ability to sell difficult compromises to the Iranian public while preserving the state under the authority of a supreme leader kept out of sight by security considerations.
For decades, the rifle beside the pulpit illustrated the Islamic Republic’s fusion of religion and force. With the supreme leader abIran Calls on Houthis to Disrupt the Bab el-Mandeb Straitsent from public view, the balance has shifted. The turban remains, but it is increasingly the rifle that appears to command.
Adapted and translated from the original Arabic.
