Iran Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei is “wounded, isolated, and not responding to messages being relayed to him,” according to anonymous alleged U.S. and Israeli security officials speaking to mainstream media outlets this weekend.
The assessment was relayed by the Washington Post in an otherwise dour status report on Sunday, which portrayed Operation Epic Fury as boiling down to a vicious struggle for control over the Strait of Hormuz in which Iran supposedly holds most of the cards.
Even the dubious condition of Khamenei, who was hastily appointed two weeks ago to replace his slain father Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, made the situation worse for America and Israel in the Washington Post’s analysis, because his status as an incommunicado figurehead has allowed “surviving clerics and leaders of Iran’s powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps have consolidated their grip on the country.”
The Times of Israel (TOI) reported on Monday that U.S. and Israeli intelligence teams are “working to detect traces of Khamenei as he remains unseen since being declared the new supreme leader.”
The New York Post on Saturday cited intel from the CIA and Mossad that suggest Khamenei is “alive,” but his “whereabouts and condition remain a puzzling mystery” to both outside observers and Iranians.
“It’s beyond weird,” a U.S. official said. “We don’t think the Iranians would have gone through all this trouble to choose a dead guy as the supreme leader, but at the same time, we have no proof that he is taking the helm.”
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The Jerusalem Post on Saturday quoted a “well-informed source” who said Khamenei is probably alive, but is being used as a puppet figurehead by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
“The more likely scenario is that the Revolutionary Guards are controlling him, not the other way around. In a few days, we will probably know more,” the source said.
Khamenei has ostensibly released two brief written statements so far, but there is no conclusive proof he wrote them. He conspicuously failed to make a public appearance, or issue either a video or audio address, for the Persian New Year holiday of Nowruz on Friday. His father had delivered a televised address every year since 1989.
Dissident news service IranWire noted that a rambling ten-page document attributed to Khamenei was released on Friday that was “largely focused on justifying the transfer of power, explaining a policy of ‘media silence’ during wartime, and outlining efforts to manage relations with neighboring countries to prevent the conflict from widening.”
IranWire said the document released on Friday sought to “frame the ongoing war as a religious struggle and rally support among the more devout segments of society, particularly within the IRGC and Basij, who may have been shaken by recent ‘decapitation’ strikes.”
The document also featured a highly improbable claim that Mojtaba Khamenei has been moving unseen among the people of Iran during the war and eavesdropping on their conversations to determine the true attitude of the Iranian people.
The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) noted on Saturday that the Iranian regime has released some archival, faked, and A.I.-generated images of the new Supreme Leader that do not appear to have fooled anyone. Even the profile photo on Khamenei’s purported X social media account is allegedly an A.I. creation.
