If he is to be the strong leader THAT he claims to want to be, he must first force the old guard to resign.
In this construction, the strong leader is not who he is, just a character/role that he claims to want to be.
如果他意欲成為他所宣稱的強勢領導人,他首先必須逼退守舊勢力。
old guard ,長期佔有重要職位的保守守舊勢力
[補充]
1.) If we reconstruct the original sentence as,
"Since he has claimed that [he is to be the strong leader], he must first force the old guard to resign."
Noticed that the bracketed clause, [he is to be the strong leader], is an open statement, instead of relating to the "he" personally..
2.) It should be mentioned that in the example below, both "who" and "that " are correct, although "that" is more common in everyday speech.
"He is the only student that/who said “no” to the teacher."
http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/344698/is-this-sentence-wrong-you-are-the-only-friend-that-he-will-listen-to-at-all