Iran’s new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, hasn’t been seen since the Feb. 28 strikes that blew up his father, baffling US and Israeli officials as to his current whereabouts and whether he’s actually running the Iranian regime.
Since the strikes that took out Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the younger Khamenei has issued two written statements, but no one has so much as heard his voice.
It’s left Iranians speculating whether he’s even alive — and earned him the moniker “the cardboard ayatollah” — after an AI-generated video of supporters hailing a cardboard cutout of him went viral.
But intelligence from both the CIA and Israel’s Mossad — like evidence regime officials in Tehran have been trying to schedule in-person meetings with Khamenei — suggest he’s alive.
His whereabouts and condition though — he was wounded in the opening strikes of the war that took out his father — remain a puzzling mystery.
The White House’s national security team is trying to figure out if the younger Khamenei, 56, is actually the one in charge — and if not, who is, a US official told Axios.
“We have no evidence that he is really the one giving orders,” a senior Israeli official told Axios.
“It’s beyond weird,” a US official added. “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.”
Khamenei was announced as the new supreme leader on March 9. His public response came three days letter in a written statement.
“We will not forgo avenging the blood of the martyrs,” the statement, read on Iranian state television, said.
“Every citizen killed by the enemy is a case for vengeance in itself.”
Trump administration officials took it as evidence he was badly wounded in the strike.
“Iran has plenty of cameras and voice recorders. Why a written statement? I think you know why,” Secretary of War Pete Hegseth told reporters at a briefing last week. “The new so-called not-so-supreme leader is wounded and likely disfigured.”
The speculation escalated Friday, when he didn’t appear in public for the Persian New Year, Nowruz, as is tradition — or even release a video address.
Again, a written statement was issued purported to be from the supreme leader, saying the US and Israel made a “gross miscalculation” by starting the war in Iran.
“This war took place with the illusion that if they martyred the head of the system and a number of influential military figures, it would create fear and despair in people, and in this way, it would realize the dream of dominating Iran and then disintegrating it,” he declared through a message read on Iranian television Friday.
