He just won’t die.
Mojtaba Khamenei was rushed to a Tehran hospital after the February strikes targeting his father nearly killed him, only to be “pulled from the rubble” again after the United States and Israel bombed the medical center, an Iranian cleric revealed in an interview with Qatari television this week.
After obliterating Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s Tehran compound — which killed the 86-year-old supreme leader and dozens of his top leaders — the allies also reportedly bombed three different hospitals in Tehran on Feb. 28 to launch the war.
Mojtaba Khamenei succeeded his father Ali Khamenei as supreme leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran. ISNA/AFP via Getty Images
The younger Khamenei, 56, was pulled from underneath the rubble of one of the hospitals, before vanishing to an unknown location — and has not been seen in public or his voice heard since.
“Even after he had been wounded and taken to the hospital, three hospitals in Tehran were bombed,” Mohsen Heydari, a member of Iran’s Assembly of Experts, told Qatari television network Al Araby Thursday.
“Mojtaba Khamenei was in the third hospital and was pulled from the rubble.”
The younger Khamenei also apparently had no clue he’d been tapped March 8 as the new supreme leader until the announcement was broadcast publicly on state TV. But once the decision was made, the “probably gay” Khamenei was “legally and religiously” obligated to take it, Heydari said.
The Assembly of Experts, the body mandated with choosing Iran’s new supreme leader, was reportedly itself a target of the US and Israel. Its Qom Secretariat was bombed, killing eight people, and burning reports and recommendations on a new supreme leader.
So the members each wrote their vote on paper before being summoned to a secret room, without being told the location or nature of the meeting in advance, a week after the first strikes.
Mohsen Al-Haidari was among those voted for the new supreme leader. Al-Arabi – News/Youtube
Heidari was the first person to suggest Khamenei’s name during the session — in defiance to President Trump who had warned Iran against choosing the late Khamenei’s son, who was reportedly even more of a hardliner than his father.
“Given the enemy’s position, we will choose and elect no one as leader and supreme guide of the Islamic Republic except Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei,” Heidari recalled saying.
“We obtained information that Mojtaba Khamenei was healthy and able to lead, and we determined that he met the requirements of religious qualification, justice and competence to manage the country,” he told the outlet.
A satellite image shows a destroyed residence complex belonging to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Tehran. via REUTERS
Khamenei received 50 of 59 votes during the meeting — eight voted for Ayatollah Alireza Arafi, and one member of the assembly abstained.
Heidari called Khamenei a “man of the shadows” in the Qatari interview — he never held a political position within the Iranian state before becoming supreme leader but reportedly served as an adviser to his father.
Speculation has run rampant for months over the health of Khamenei — and whether he is even alive. US intelligence reports have suggested he was badly disfigured in the attacks.
Last month President Trump said “I don’t think he’s dead” when asked about his condition.
“He was very seriously wounded. The left side of his body, the arm, the leg, the whole thing. He was very seriously wounded, but I don’t think he’s dead,” he added.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian claimed the out-of-sight supreme leader was “completely” healthy in an interview on Fox News this week while in New York City for the UN General Assembly.
“We met for about seven hours,” the Iranian president told “Special Report” host Bret Baier of a meeting between the two Iranian leaders last month. “We conducted talks.”