Iran’s new Supreme Leader is ‘in a coma’ and has lost a leg after being seriously injured in air strikes, a report has claimed.
Mojtaba Khamenei, 56, is in intensive care at the Sina University Hospital in the city’s historic quarter surrounded by security officials, according to a source in Tehran. A section of the hospital has been sealed off to guard Iran’s Supreme Leader.
It is unclear whether Mojtaba was injured in the same air strikes which killed his 86-year-old father, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, on February 28.
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 Zafargjani, Iran’s Minister of Health, Treatment and Medical Education and one of the country’s top trauma surgeons.
Mr Zafargjani’s Persian Wikipedia page details eight years’ experience operating in the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s. The regime’s most trusted doctor was also injured by chemical weapons himself in the war.
The 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.’
It is impossible to verify the condition of Iran’s new Supreme Leader due to the regime’s current internet blackout, but Iranian state TV have referred to Mojtaba is ‘Jaanbaz of Ramadan‘ – meaning ‘wounded war veteran’.
While the new Supreme Leader has also not been seen for weeks, Iran is being run by regional commanders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, who are believed to be under orders to fight on indefinitely – even without a leader.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s son, Mojtaba Khamenei, has lost a leg and is in a coma, a report has claimed
A ship burns after Iranian explosive-laden boats appear to have been attacked last night by more missiles and drone strikes from the US and Israel
Authorities in Iran announced Mojtaba Khamenei, the late Ayatollah’s second son, as Iran’s new Supreme Leader on Sunday. Mojtaba is said to be ‘obsessed with the end of days’ and will not hesitate to ‘kill thousands’
It comes as another source, a former study partner of Mojtaba, revealed that the new Supreme Leader is said to be ‘obsessed with the end of days’ and is ‘more dangerous’ than his father.
Mojtaba Khamenei is reportedly unafraid of ‘killing thousands’ and will ‘try and control the region’ if war breaks out, exiled official Jaber Rajabi has revealed.
Rajabi, a former foreign policy advisor to Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who has lived in exile in the UAE since 2021, studied at a ‘religious seminary’ with Mojtaba Khamenei in Qom.
He has spoken out to warn that Iran’s new Supreme Leader is more ruthless than his father and a ‘better liar’.
Rajabi told the Jerusalem Post: ‘Mojtaba will not, from the first day in power, claim to want to take Al-Quds (Jerusalem).
‘He is opposite to his father, who gets angry, and it is visible… Mojtaba can lie in a much better way and knows how to play.’
While studying with Mojtaba at The Qom Seminary – the most highly regarded centre for Islamic scholarship in Iran – Rajabi described him as ‘obsessed with the end of days’ and that he believed ‘he himself will have a special part in hastening humanity down that path’.
According to Twelver Shia – the largest branch of Shia Islam studied by Khamenei at Qom – the 12th Imam, Muhammad al-Mahdi, who is believed to be in hiding, will return at the end of times to establish a period of global justice in which oppression is eradicated.
Islamic apocalyptic traditions describe major conflicts happening before this era, including the Malhama al-Kubra – a great battle sometimes interpreted as a confrontation with Western powers.
Rajabi said: ‘I remember Khamenei spoke in Hawza studies (and) said the nuclear issue and the soldiers are his heritage. Mojtaba’s ambitions will not be impacted by airstrikes.
‘There are other matters I can’t mention… They need the nuclear issue as a protection for their regime and their hegemony in the region.’
Rajabi added that Khamenei had a disregard for human life, saying: ‘If he can kill 13,000 of his own people, then he has no problem killing 100,000 in Tel Aviv, because if you don’t care about the lives of your own people, why would you care about the lives of others in Tel Aviv?’
The comments come as Iran’s new Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei is reportedly in hospital with serious injuries after being blasted in the same strike that killed his father, according to a regime official.
Mojtaba Khamenei, 56, who has not been seen in public or pictured since taking over from Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Sunday, was injured in the attack on his father’s compound in Tehran on the first day of the war.
Mojtaba, described as a ‘wounded veteran’ of the war by Iranian state TV, suffered injuries to his legs and is currently in hospital.
‘He was also there and he was injured in that bombardment,’ Alireza Salarian, Iran’s ambassador to Cyprus, told The Guardian.
‘I have heard that he was injured in his legs and hand and arm… I think he is in the hospital because he is injured.’
Mojtaba’s injuries are behind his mysterious absence from the public eye, the ambassador said, adding he also wants to avoid the glare of Israel and the US.
He said: ‘I don’t think he is comfortable [in any condition] to give a speech.’
Iranian officials have claimed he remains alert and is sheltering at a highly secure location with limited communication.
The ‘vengeful’ hardline cleric has been marked for assassination by Israel after it vowed to ‘eliminate’ whoever succeeded the slain Ayatollah, having killed him, Mojtaba’s wife Zahra Haddad-Adel and one of his sons in strikes on Tehran on the first day of the war.
Donald Trump also ramped up his threats against the supreme leader, claiming he won’t be able to ‘live in peace’ and warning Iran to brace for ‘death, fire and fury.’
In one report on Mojtaba’s ascension to supreme leader on Iranian state TV, it refers to him as being wounded in the war.
The anchor describes him as ‘janbaz’, or wounded by the enemy, in the ‘Ramadan war,’ which is how media in Iran refer to the current conflict.
It did not elaborate on how he was injured, although his wife and father were killed in Israeli strikes.
