Mojtaba Khamenei reappointed 69-year-old cleric Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei as Iran's chief justice for a second five-year term on July 5, 2026, with the decree carried by Iranian media on that Sunday and confirmed in a text message attributed to the new Supreme Leader, according to Al Jazeera and Iran Press. The timing was conspicuous: the announcement fell amid the funeral procession of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, whose remains were being escorted by IRGC guard units on a route from Tehran to Qom, then to Iraq, before final burial in Mashhad.

Mojtaba Khamenei inherited the Supreme Leadership in March 2026, weeks after his father and four family members were killed in an air strike on February 28 — the opening day of what Iranian authorities describe as the US-Israel war on Iran. He had not appeared publicly since taking office. The reappointment of Mohseni-Ejei is, by available evidence, his most visible exercise of executive authority to date, delivered not through a formal press conference but via a text message citing constitutional authority and praising Mohseni-Ejei's "valuable and sincere" efforts during his first term, as reported by China Daily Asia.

In his confirmation message, Mojtaba Khamenei tasked Mohseni-Ejei with fighting corruption, pursuing a "judicial transformation," and prosecuting crimes by what the decree called "arrogant powers" and "global aggressors" — language that, in the Islamic Republic's political vocabulary, refers to the United States and Israel. Mohseni-Ejei, speaking to state television, pledged commitment to the "peaks of success" envisioned by the Republic's leadership, addressed calls for revenge for the elder Khamenei's assassination, and renewed his support for the axis of resistance — Iran's network of regional armed proxies and allies. He also promised "decisive action" against hoarding and price gouging, a nod to acute economic pressure on Iranian households.

The funeral gathering itself offered a rare snapshot of the Islamic Republic's power constellation. President Masoud Pezeshkian, former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and IRGC commander-in-chief Ahmad Vahidi were all present alongside Mohseni-Ejei, according to Al Jazeera.

The Judiciary's Wartime Record

Mohseni-Ejei's reappointment is not a bureaucratic formality. During the 12-day war with the US and Israel, the judiciary he led carried out near-daily executions of dissidents and individuals arrested on security charges, including protesters detained during nationwide anti-government demonstrations in January 2026. International human rights organisations reported that execution rates surged to their highest levels since the late 1980s — the period of mass political killings that remains one of the most contested chapters in the Islamic Republic's history. Following the war, Iran's parliament passed legislation significantly expanding the prosecution of espionage and national security offences, further broadening the judiciary's remit.

Retaining Mohseni-Ejei under these conditions signals continuity in internal security posture. The new Supreme Leader, consolidating authority while still largely absent from public view, is keeping in place the judicial architecture that managed — and in the state's framing, defended — the home front during an existential military confrontation.

The broader institutional question is what Mojtaba Khamenei's leadership looks like once the period of acute crisis and mourning gives way to routine governance. His father spent 34 years cultivating an elaborate equilibrium among the IRGC, the clergy, the presidency, and the judiciary. The son inherits that equilibrium under sanctions pressure, postwar reconstruction demands, and an opposition movement that, whatever its current suppression, has not been ideologically extinguished. Mohseni-Ejei, a fixture of the security-judicial apparatus since the 1980s, is a known quantity to every faction inside that system.

The reappointment, arriving via text message during a state funeral, is also a study in how authority is communicated in a system where the Supreme Leader's physical seclusion carries its own political logic. It signals capability without requiring a public stage — and, in a state still processing the trauma of a wartime leadership decapitation, that restraint may itself be a form of consolidation.