For weeks, people on Persian-language social media have been asking about the fate of Mohammad-Bagher Kharrazi, a senior cleric with close ties to the leadership of the regime.
Early last month, Kharrazi made wild claims online about the inner workings of the highest levels of the Islamic Republic, provoking complaints from the Foreign Ministry, the secretariat of the Supreme National Security Council, and the legal affairs office of President Masoud Pezeshkian.
On Tuesday, Iran’s judiciary announced that Kharrazi has been detained and is under investigation by the Special Prosecutor’s Office for Clerics.
Although Kharrazi holds no official government position, he comes from a family connected to Iran’s clerical establishment, diplomats, the Khamenei family, and the country’s biggest cryptocurrency exchange.
Wild Claims
Kharrazi incurred the ire of the authorities when, in early August, a video circulated widely on Persian-language social media in which Kharrazi, sitting in clerical robes, with a black turban and prayer beads in his hand, made claims about the goings-on inside Iran’s leadership. He purported to have information about President Masoud Pezeshkian resigning, or threatening to resign, “27 or 28 times.” He said Iran’s supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, had written that if Pezeshkian threatened to resign one more time, he would accept it.
The supreme leader’s office denied Kharrazi’s claim about Pezeshkian and called it “completely false and untrue.” The president’s office also called it baseless, and there is no evidence that Pezeshkian in fact threatened to resign dozens of times.
In another post, a prediction Kharrazi made online turned out to have come true. Days after Kharrazi predicted that this would happen, the supreme leader reshuffled the top leadership of the Supreme National Security Council, as reported in this briefing last month.
Kharrazi’s family belongs to the regime’s elite . His sister is married to supreme leader Mojtaba Khamenei’s brother. His late father was a senior cleric and member of the Assembly of Experts, his brother is a veteran diplomat, and his uncle was Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations and later foreign minister before he was killed in an airstrike during the 2026 war.
Kharrazi, 65, is secretary-general of “Hezbollah of Iran,” a radical political organization that began operating in the 1990s but never became a major political force. He tried to run for president in 2013 but was disqualified by the Guardian Council, the powerful body that vets candidates.
Although on his website and social media, Kharrazi refers to himself as an ayatollah, the judiciary’s spokesman called him “Mr. Kharrazi” and said that because he wore clerical clothes, his case fell under the jurisdiction of the Special Court for Clerics.
Links to Cryptocurrency
Kharrazi also has a link to Iran’s cryptocurrency market via his sons. In May, Reuters reported that two of his sons, Ali and Mohammad, were the founders of Nobitex, which has become Iran’s largest cryptocurrency exchange.
Ordinary Iranians use cryptocurrency to protect their savings against inflation and reach markets outside Iran’s heavily sanctioned banking system.
Reuters also found transactions involving sanctioned Iranian entities, including the Central Bank and the IRGC, a designated terrorist organization by the United States. Nobitex denied being an arm of the government or IRGC and said illicit transactions happened without its knowledge.
A month after the Reuters investigation, the U.S. Treasury sanctioned Nobitex and the two brothers , identifying them as members of the Kharrazi family.
More Videos, More Claims
After his August remarks went viral, older videos of Kharrazi started reappearing.
In one, he argued that Iran needed an atomic bomb. In another, he suggested creating a civil war in the United States between Black and white Americans.
Another clip showed him saying: “I issue a religious ruling that anyone who goes without the hijab should be killed.”
He also proposed organizing tens of thousands of people in Tehran against women who refuse the mandatory hijab and described Pezeshkian’s government as “satanic” and its officials as American agents.
Kharrazi later said some of the videos circulating under his name had been made using artificial intelligence.
Iranian media continued circulating videos attributed to him through August 16, but then his public presence went quiet.