Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has blocked President Masoud Pezeshkian's appointments, erected a security cordon around Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, and effectively seized control of key state functions, Fox News Digital reported, citing an Iran International investigation published Tuesday.
The report paints a picture of a civilian president reduced to a figurehead, unable to name his own cabinet ministers, unable even to reach the supreme leader by phone. If accurate, it marks the most visible consolidation of military authority inside Iran's government since the 1979 Islamic Revolution that created the Revolutionary Guard in the first place.
Iran's mission to the United Nations declined to comment.
Pezeshkian won election in 2025 on promises of moderation and reform. Those promises now look hollow. Iran International's sources described a president who reached a "complete political deadlock" after the IRGC moved to override his authority on personnel decisions, the most basic lever any executive holds.
His effort to appoint a new intelligence minister collapsed under direct pressure from IRGC commander Ahmad Vahidi. Under Iran's system, the president traditionally nominates an intelligence minister only after securing approval from the supreme leader. But Vahidi reportedly rejected every proposed candidate, including former Defense Minister Hossein Dehghan, and insisted that critical positions be chosen and managed directly by the Revolutionary Guard "until further notice."
That phrase, "until further notice", tells you everything about how the IRGC views civilian governance in Tehran right now. It is provisional. It exists at the Guard's pleasure.
Pezeshkian reportedly sought an urgent meeting with Mojtaba Khamenei multiple times but could not establish contact. The supreme leader's condition and whereabouts have been unclear in recent weeks, a fact that raises its own set of troubling questions, especially given reports that Khamenei was severely disfigured in U.S.-Israel airstrikes on Tehran earlier this year.
Access to Mojtaba Khamenei is now controlled by what sources described to Iran International as a "military council" of senior IRGC officers. That arrangement means the Guard doesn't just dominate policy, it controls who gets to talk to the man at the top of Iran's theocratic hierarchy.
The security cordon around Khamenei raises a question no one in Tehran appears willing to answer publicly: Is the supreme leader governing, or is he being managed?
Inside Khamenei's own office, the report described internal friction over the succession that brought him to power. Ali Asghar Hejazi, a powerful security official inside the supreme leader's office, reportedly warned members of the Assembly of Experts that Mojtaba lacked the qualifications for the role and that hereditary succession violated principles laid out by his father, Ali Khamenei. Hejazi also warned that installing Mojtaba would hand the country to the Revolutionary Guard and sideline civilian institutions entirely.
That warning appears to have been prescient. Some of Mojtaba Khamenei's associates were reportedly trying to push Hejazi out precisely because he opposed the succession. The pattern is familiar: dissent is punished, and the security apparatus closes ranks around itself.
The turmoil at the top of Iran's government follows a period of extraordinary pressure on the regime's leadership. Israeli strikes have killed senior IRGC intelligence and Quds Force commanders, hollowing out the Guard's upper ranks even as it consolidates domestic political power.
Behnam Ben Taleblu, senior director of the Iran program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told Fox News Digital that the IRGC's power grab was a matter of trajectory, not surprise.
"It was always a matter of when, not if, the IRGC was going to step forward even more than it has in the last three decades."
Ben Taleblu cautioned against framing the development as a military coup in the traditional sense.
"But it's a mistake to assume this is some sort of coup. This has been the process in Iran for years now, as the regime has chosen conflict over cooperation and emboldened its security forces at every juncture."
He also pushed back on any sympathy for Pezeshkian's diminished position, pointing to the president's record, or lack of one, on the regime's worst abuses. Ben Taleblu told Fox News Digital:
"Those who worry about Pezeshkian's potential sidelining need to consider what he realistically was or wasn't able to do mere months ago when the regime slaughtered 40,000 Iranians in the streets."
That number, 40,000, deserves to sit with anyone in Washington or European capitals who still holds out hope that Iran's "reformist" president represents a meaningful alternative to the hardliners. A president who cannot stop mass killing of his own citizens is not a reformer. He is a label on an empty office.
Foreign policy analyst and journalist Lisa Daftari offered Fox News Digital a blunt assessment of what IRGC commander Ahmad Vahidi's expanded role means for Iran's direction.
"By any standard, Vahidi is considered a radical even within the regime's hardline elite, and his rise is a warning that Tehran's war machine now calls the shots."
The State Department has designated the IRGC as a foreign terrorist organization. Vahidi's reported insistence that the Guard directly manage all critical government positions, overriding the elected president, suggests the organization now views civilian governance as an obstacle rather than a partner. That distinction matters for American policymakers trying to assess who actually holds decision-making authority in Tehran.
Understanding Iran's fractured internal power structure has never been more important. If the IRGC controls appointments, access to the supreme leader, and the security apparatus, then any diplomatic channel that runs through Pezeshkian's office is a dead letter.
The killing of senior Iranian officials by Israeli forces, including the elimination of security chief Ali Larijani, has only accelerated the internal scramble for control. Each strike removes a node in the regime's decision-making chain and forces the survivors to consolidate faster.
Several facts remain unclear. Iran International's report did not specify where the security cordon around Mojtaba Khamenei was established or what evidence underpinned the claim that the IRGC assumed control over "key state functions" beyond the blocked appointments. Neither Pezeshkian nor Mojtaba Khamenei has publicly responded to the report.
A photo caption in the Fox News Digital report placed a banner featuring Mojtaba Khamenei and senior IRGC commanders on display in Tehran as recently as March 14, 2026, a public signal, if nothing else, of where power resides.
For the United States, the practical question is straightforward: Who runs Iran? If the answer is a U.S.-designated terrorist organization that has sidelined the elected president, controls access to the supreme leader, and insists on managing all critical government posts, then the diplomatic playbook changes accordingly. Engagement with a figurehead president is not engagement with Iran. It is theater.
The Trump administration has maintained a posture of maximum pressure rather than premature concessions, and the IRGC's consolidation of power only reinforces the logic of that approach.
When the military wing of a terrorist-designated organization openly runs a country, the last thing you do is pretend the civilian in the presidential palace has a say.
