{"id":165947,"date":"2026-03-17T05:43:25","date_gmt":"2026-03-17T05:43:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/165947\/"},"modified":"2026-03-17T05:43:25","modified_gmt":"2026-03-17T05:43:25","slug":"trump-admits-us-doesnt-know-if-new-iranian-supreme-leader-mojtaba-khamenei-is-dead-or-not","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/165947\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump admits US doesn’t know if new Iranian supreme leader Mojtaba Khamenei is ‘dead or not’"},"content":{"rendered":"

President Trump\u00a0speculated at length Monday about the fate of\u00a0Mojtaba Khamenei<\/a>, pointing out that no one has seen him in public even\u00a0as a new recording\u00a0<\/a>indicated the Iranian supreme leader initially survived the bombing that killed his father last month.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of people are\u00a0saying that he\u2019s badly disfigured.<\/a>\u00a0They\u2019re saying that he lost his leg, one leg, and he\u2019s been hurt very badly. Other people are saying he\u2019s dead,\u201d Trump told reporters in the White House East Room.<\/p>\n

\"U.S.President Trump said during a press conference in the East Room on Monday that the US doesn\u2019t know if newly appointed Iranian supreme leader Mojtaba Khamenei is alive. REUTERS<\/p>\n

Mojtaba Khamenei made his first statement Thursday<\/a>\u00a0since being named to replace his late father four days earlier, on March 8 \u2014\u00a0but the message was read out by an anchor on Iranian state TV and there have been no confirmed sightings of the new supreme leader since his appointment.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe haven\u2019t seen\u201d him \u201cat all,\u201d Trump pointed out Monday before admitting that US officials don\u2019t know \u201cif he\u2019s dead or not. Nobody\u2019s seen him, which is unusual.\u201d<\/p>\n

A\u00a0new report, however, indicates the younger Khamenei survived the\u00a0Israeli strike\u00a0<\/a>that killed the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei after Mojtaba stepped outside the family compound to walk in the garden minutes before the blast.<\/p>\n

The 56-year-old was in Tehran on the night of Feb. 28 when he stepped out \u201cto do something,\u201d\u00a0The Telegraph reported.<\/a><\/p>\n

While Mojtaba Khamenei was absent,\u00a0Israel\u2019s space-faring Blue Sparrow ballistic missiles<\/a>\u00a0hit the compound, killing Ali Khamenei along with and dozens of his senior officers and family members.<\/p>\n

The Trump administration has not commented on the recording but has said repeatedly they believe the new leader is at least injured.<\/p>\n

Khamenei \u201cis wounded and likely disfigured,\u201d Secretary of War Pete Hegseth claimed on Friday.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Iran has not given any details about Khamenei\u2019s condition.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"AA woman holding up a poster of Mojtaba Khamenei during a rally in Tehran on March 13, 2026. AP<\/p>\n

The audio reported by the Telegraph is from remarks\u00a0delivered March 12 by Mazaher Hosseini, a top Iranian government official.<\/p>\n

Mojtaba\u00a0Khamenei\u2019s wife and son were killed instantly in the Israeli strike and his brother-in-law was decapitated.<\/p>\n

Much remains to be learned about the younger Khamenei, who is one of six children of the late ayatollah.\u00a0<\/p>\n

US intelligence indicates Khamenei may be gay \u2014 and that his father\u00a0feared his suitability to rule the Islamic Republic<\/a>\u00a0for that reason,\u00a0The Post revealed<\/a>\u00a0earlier Monday.<\/p>\n

Trump couldn\u2019t contain his surprise and laughed aloud when he was briefed on the intel, according to sources.<\/p>\n

Publicly, the president has said he\u2019s \u201cnot happy\u201d with the new leader, whom he has dismissed as a \u201clightweight\u201d and described as a \u201cmistake\u201d of a choice by Iran.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"President Trump\u00a0speculated at length Monday about the fate of\u00a0Mojtaba Khamenei, pointing out that no one has seen him…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":165948,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[153,14670,66834,9,11,10,62206,87,58,1076],"class_list":["post-165947","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-donald-trump","tag-iran","tag-mojtaba-khamenei","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-operation-epic-fury","tag-politics","tag-us-news","tag-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165947","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=165947"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165947\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/165948"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=165947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=165947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=165947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}