LONDON: Speculation has been mounting over the whereabouts of Iran’s injured new Supreme Leader with Kuwaiti media claiming he has been rushed to Moscow for emergency leg surgery, British media reported.
Mojtaba Khamenei, 56, succeeded his father, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, following his assassination on February 28, but a string of reports have said he has been in a coma following an airstrike with some observers, including President Donald Trump, suggesting he is dead.
Khamenei is apparently unaware both that there is a war on and that he is the country’s new leader. His injuries have required him to be flown to Russia for an operation ‘personally offered by Putin’, according to news outlet Al-Jarida. The mission to sneak the new Ayatollah out of the country was intended to be top secret and involved him boarding a Russian military aircraft.
He then headed to one of Putin’s presidential palaces where he underwent ‘successful’ surgery. The report remains unconfirmed, but Al-Jarida claims it received its information from a ‘high-ranking source close to the new Iranian Supreme Leader’.
Khamenei was injured early in America’s Operation Epic Fury, the source added, and his injuries could not be treated in Iran while the country is under constant attack from the US and Israel. It is unclear whether Mojtaba was injured in the same air strikes which killed his 86-year-old father.
A separate source told The Sun through secret messages sent to an exiled dissident based in London: ‘One or two of his legs have been cut off. His liver or stomach has also ruptured. He is apparently in a coma as well.’
The source, who does not want to be named out of fear for his life, said the new Supreme Leader is under the care of Mohammad Reza Zafarghandi, Iran’s Minister of Health, Treatment and Medical Education and one of the country’s top trauma surgeons. Meanwhile, US Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth said on Friday he believes Mojtaba is wounded.
‘We know the new so-called, not-so-supreme leader is wounded and likely disfigured,’ Hegseth told a press conference. So far, Iranian officials have confirmed the new leader is wounded but have given no further details.
Other reports suggest that Iranian commanders have not received orders from their new supreme leader.
An Iranian official speaking from inside the war-torn country told The Telegraph: “No one knows anything about Mojtaba, whether he is alive or dead or how badly injured. We are all just told that he’s injured. He has no control over the war because he is not here. The majority of commanders, or more correctly, all commanders, have no news about him.”
