The UK Times reported on Monday that Iran’s new Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, is “incapacitated and receiving medical treatment in the holy city of Qom.”
The Times report was based on “a diplomatic memo understood to be based on American and Israeli intelligence and shared with Gulf allies.”
The memo said Khamenei is suffering from a “severe condition” and is “unable to be involved in any decision making by the regime.”
Qom is a provincial capital and one of the largest cities in Iran, located about 85 miles south of Tehran. The city has historic and religious significance to the Shia branch of Islam and boasts the largest Shiite madrassa (religious school) in Iran. Qom was the scene of the Iranian Army’s surrender to the Islamic revolution led by the first Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, in 1979.
Qom was hit by U.S.-Israeli airstrikes on Monday, allegedly killing at least five people. According to local officials, the target of the strike was a “residential building.” The diplomatic memo viewed by the Times evidently did not specify exactly where Khamenei is receiving treatment in the city of Qom.
Mojtaba Khamenei, 56, is the third Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, having been hastily installed in the office on March 9 to succeed his father, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was liquidated in the opening hours of Operation Epic Fury on February 28.
The diplomatic memo viewed by the Times said the Iranian regime is “laying the groundworks needed to build a large mausoleum in Qom” for Ali Khamenei, and possibly other members of his family who were killed in the airstrike. Previous reports by Iranian state media said that Khamenei’s remains would be interred at a Shiite shrine in Mashhad, the city where he was born, and a public ceremony would be held in the capital, Tehran.
President Donald Trump described the elder Khamenei as “one of the most evil people in history” and his son’s resume did not suggest he would be much of an improvement. Mojtaba Khamenei reportedly played a key role in the murderous suppression of the January uprising in Iran – during which the regime callously killed thousands, and possibly tens of thousands, of its own people to stay in power.
Rumors have swirled that the new Supreme Leader was incapacitated or dead ever since he was named, due to injuries sustained in the airstrike that eliminated his father. He has yet to make a public appearance or issue a confirmed statement – all of his pronouncements have been written documents of uncertain origin read on camera by other people.
Khamenei did not even attend the ceremony at which he was formally declared “supreme leader” and his subjects were made to swear fealty to him. The regime made do with posters and paintings of him, and he became known derisively as the “Cardboard Ayatollah,” although images of Iranian officials setting up actual cardboard cutouts of him were revealed to be fake.
Most of the statements attributed to Khamenei have been threats of revenge against the United States and Israel. On April 1, for example, he purportedly vowed to continue Iran’s support for terrorism across the Middle East.