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By Staff Writer
The killing of Iran’s Supreme Leader and Minister of Defence decapitates the ownership chain of Iran’s largest digital company, co-owned by the MTN Group and now operated by an IRGC veteran as a wartime weapons platform.
Israeli strikes on Tehran on Saturday killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Defence Minister Amir Nasirzadeh, according to Israeli officials briefed on the operation and confirmed by multiple Western intelligence sources.
The significance of these deaths for the future of the Iranian state will be analysed extensively in the days ahead. But there is a corporate dimension to the killings that has received almost no attention and that carries profound legal, financial and governance implications: both of the ultimate controlling shareholders of MTN-Irancell, Iran’s largest mobile telecommunications network, are now dead.
The ownership structure that no longer exists
MTN-Irancell is a joint venture in which MTN Group holds a 49 per cent minority stake. The controlling 51 per cent is held by the Iran Electronic Development Company (IEDC), which is itself owned by two entities: Iran Electronics Industries (Sairan), a subsidiary of the Ministry of Defence and Armed Forces Logistics (MODAFL), and the Bonyad Mostazafan (Foundation of the Oppressed), a sprawling conglomerate that is legally classified as neither public nor private and answers solely to the Supreme Leader.
The Bonyad Mostazafan is the second-largest commercial enterprise in Iran after the National Iranian Oil Company and the largest holding conglomerate in the Middle East. It controls more than 350 subsidiaries, employs over 200,000 people and, according to its own 2016 accounts, Irancell was its single most profitable asset. The foundation was established in 1980 following the Islamic Revolution to manage assets confiscated from the Pahlavi era. Its chairman is appointed by and reports directly to the Supreme Leader.
Defence Minister Nasirzadeh led the apex of MODAFL, which controls Sairan and, through the Defence Ministry’s controlling share in IEDC, exerts decisive influence over Irancell. Nasirzadeh also ran the Organisation of Defensive Innovation and Research (SPND), which advances nuclear, biological and chemical weapons projects and has partnered with MTN-Irancell on artificial intelligence initiatives. Khamenei exercised direct personal authority over the Bonyad Mostazafan. Both men are now dead. The ownership chain that governed 51 per cent of a company integral to the Iranian military-industrial complex, the country’s largest digital network serving 70 million subscribers and generating billions of dollars in revenue, has been decapitated.
No counterparty, no exit
For MTN Group, the immediate consequence is that there is no longer a functioning counterparty on the other side of the shareholder relationship. Even before the strikes, MTN’s position in Iran had been described by its chief executive, Ralph Mupita, as a “frozen asset” from which “you cannot take money in and you cannot take money out”.
Any exit from a frozen asset required a willing and authorised counterparty capable of approving a transfer of MTN’s stake. The Supreme Leader’s office controlled the Bonyad Mostazafan. The Defence Minister controlled MODAFL. Both are now dead, and the constitutional mechanism for replacing the Supreme Leader – selection by the Assembly of Experts, a body of senior clerics – faces an unprecedented challenge given that Israel’s strikes also targeted scores of senior IRGC commanders and political officials. Ali Larijani, reportedly elevated by Khamenei’s pre-existing succession plan, has issued a statement vowing revenge but has no constitutional authority over the Bonyad’s commercial operations until a new Supreme Leader is formally installed.
IRGC seizure by default
While the civilian and clerical ownership structure has been decapitated, one institution with operational control over MTN-Irancell remains intact: the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). In January, the board of MTN-Irancell dismissed chief executive Alireza Rafiei for taking several hours to comply with the Supreme National Security Council’s order to shut down all communications. He was replaced with Mohammed Hossein Soleimaniyan, a senior IRGC member and veteran of its terrorist operations. That January shutdown lasted more than 20 days and provided cover for the killing of an estimated 36,500 protesters.
Today, as US and Israeli forces struck targets across Iran, MTN-Irancell’s network was again taken offline almost immediately. NetBlocks confirmed that internet connectivity collapsed to approximately four per cent of normal levels. The network that MTN Group co-owns was deployed, for the second time in eight weeks, as a wartime information control platform – this time against the very military forces of the United States, whose Department of Justice is simultaneously investigating MTN in a grand jury proceeding.
The risk now is that, in the succession vacuum created by the deaths of Khamenei and Nasirzadeh, the IRGC moves to consolidate control over the Bonyad Mostazafan’s commercial assets, including its stake in Irancell. The IRGC already controls the company operationally through Soleimaniyan. If the foundation’s assets become contested spoils in an internal power struggle, a near certainty given the scale of the decapitation, MTN Group would find itself a 49 per cent co-owner of what is effectively a wholly IRGC-controlled enterprise, with no legal or institutional buffer between it and a US-designated Foreign Terrorist Organisation.
Legal exposure transforms from historical to live
The legal implications are severe and accelerating. MTN Group disclosed in August 2025 that it is the subject of a US Department of Justice grand jury investigation into its conduct in Afghanistan and its stake in Irancell. Separately, MTN is defending litigation under the US Anti-Terrorism Act brought by the families of more than 500 American soldiers killed or injured in Iraq and Afghanistan, who allege that the company’s participation in Irancell funnelled billions to the IRGC. Turkish rival Turkcell is also pursuing a $4.2 billion lawsuit alleging that MTN obtained the Irancell licence through bribery of Iranian and South African officials.
These events transform the character of each of these proceedings. The Department of Justice investigation was initiated against the backdrop of historical conduct and a legacy investment. It now confronts a live situation in which a JSE-listed company’s subsidiary is being operated by an IRGC commander to impose a communications blackout during US military operations against Iran. The intelligence gathered during months of strike planning – Operation Epic Fury was, according to Israeli officials, planned for months with its timing set several weeks ago – will almost certainly include detailed mapping of IRGC financial flows through entities such as MTN-Irancell.
For the Anti-Terrorism Act litigation, the plaintiffs’ core allegation has always been that MTN’s investment in Irancell provided material support to the IRGC. The events of 28 February 2026 have provided them with a stark factual narrative: the IRGC now runs the company, the previous chief executive was dismissed for insufficient obedience, and the network was weaponised as a wartime tool against American forces on the very day those forces were conducting combat operations against Iran.
The Strait of Hormuz and the war economy trap
The broader operational context further isolates MTN’s position. Iran has blocked the Strait of Hormuz, with IRGC naval forces transmitting that no vessels will be permitted through the waterway on which approximately 20 per cent of global energy supplies depend. Iran has also launched retaliatory missile strikes against US bases in Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, as well as against Israel. The region is now in a state of active multi-front conflict.
MTN’s frozen billions in Iran – the company was unable to repatriate accumulated dividends and loan repayments even before today – are now trapped inside a war economy under international blockade, with the Strait of Hormuz closed and active combat operations under way. Any residual theoretical pathway to recovering value from the MTN-Irancell investment has been eliminated, while legal liability has expanded dramatically.
Implications for MTN’s institutional investors
When the Johannesburg Stock Exchange opens on Monday, MTN’s institutional investors will confront a situation without precedent in South African corporate history. The company in which they hold shares is a 49 per cent co-owner of a telecommunications network that is simultaneously: operated by a commander of a US-designated Foreign Terrorist Organisation; deployed as a wartime weapons platform against the armed forces of the United States, Israel and Gulf allies; the subject of a US grand jury investigation; the subject of Anti-Terrorism Act litigation on behalf of American military families; owned at the controlling level by entities whose leaders have been killed in US-Israeli strikes; and trapped inside a country that is blockading global energy supplies and exchanging missile fire with at least six nations.
The environmental, social and governance implications for any institutional investor holding MTN shares are now existential. The distinction between a passive, frozen legacy investment and active complicity in wartime operations by a designated terrorist organisation has collapsed. Mupita’s repeated assurance that MTN has “zero operational control” over Irancell does not provide a defence against the exponential increase in civil and criminal liability that the company, its shareholders, board members past and present, and its bankers and advisers now face not only in the United States but worldwide.
MTN has been asked to comment.
