first purported message from Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei<\/a>.\n <\/p>\n\n \u201cHe\u2019s irrelevant,\u201d Hamidi told CNN Thursday. \u201cWe\u2019re fighting the IRGC at this point.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n Hamidi also finds it difficult to believe the newly named ayatollah is even alive.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cThere\u2019s not even a single video of it,\u201d he said. Not even from a bunker, he added.\n <\/p>\n
\n Hamidi, who now lives in Canada, previously spoke with CNN in January amidst a series of anti-government protests in Iran. His parents live in Iran with currently no internet access. They\u2019re scared because \u201cbombs are dropping \u2013 but at the same time they want something to be done,\u201d he said.\n <\/p>\n
\n In Iran, people knew Mojtaba Khamenei as someone who pushed for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to win the 2005 presidential election, Hamidi said.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cAfter that people knew Mojtaba as the most politically involved child of Ali Khamenei. So, we knew he was kind of being groomed to become the next leader,\u201d he said.\n <\/p>\n
\n On Khamenei\u2019s statement saying the Strait of Hormuz will remain closed, Hamidi believes the regime\u2019s tactic is \u201ctrying to increase the economic and political price of this war on Trump so he basically quits, declares success and victory and just leaves.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n Similarly, New York resident Elie Bassalian doesn\u2019t put a ton of weight to the words attributed to Khamenei.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cNothing\u2019s really going to change unless they get new leadership,\u201d he said. \u201cI don\u2019t really dwell on any words that they say.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n Bassalian simply points to the existing regime as continuing to promote their propaganda.\n <\/p>\n
\n His parents and grandparents immigrated to New York from Iran before the 1979 revolution. Though he\u2019s never been to Iran himself, he feels close ties to it.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cWe\u2019re proudly Jewish, we\u2019re also proudly American and we\u2019re also proud of our Iranian background,\u201d he said. \u201cWhen we get together for our Sabbath, we\u2019re Jewish and we\u2019re doing all the Jewish rituals, but we\u2019re eating Persian food.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cI\u2019m hoping that America succeeds and Israel succeeds,\u201d he said.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A statement released today attributed to Iran\u2019s new Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, contains some familiar regime talking…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":335819,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-335818","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335818","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=335818"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335818\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/335819"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=335818"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=335818"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=335818"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}