Just last week Mojtaba Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, held a 7-hour meeting with the country’s president, representative of the supreme leader and senior diplomat Abdul Majid Hakeem Ilahi told NDTV, clearing the air around the top leader’s health.
Mojtaba Khamenei has not been seen in public since being injured in US-Israeli airstrikes eight months ago that launched the Iran war, killing his father and previous supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
The absence of Mojtaba Khamenei from the funeral ceremonies of his father that culminated in July raised questions about his health and fear of assassination.
Ali Khamenei was killed on February 28 in an airstrike on the first day of the US-Israeli war with Iran. Mojtaba Khamenei who was appointed supreme leader shortly after his father’s killing, has only communicated via written statements since, with no public appearances.
“He is benefiting from very good health and he’s working very nicely. Even our president mentioned that last week he had a 7-hour meeting with him. Also the Speaker of our Parliament will come here day after tomorrow. He also said yesterday that he mentioned he met him for so many hours. I have some friends who met him and they assure me and mention that he’s very, very, very healthy and he’s doing his job very nicely,” Abdul Majid Hakeem Ilahi said.
Countering claims that Mojtaba was missing from his father’s funeral, the senior Iran diplomat said that is not the case.
“New to the security, he has not come to the media and no one has seen him. But even he participated in the funeral of his father. At that time I was in Iran. I met two of his brothers. Mojtaba Khamenei was there also,” the diplomat said.
“Even some nights he comes to the street. He participated in the demonstration of the people in Iran and he’s doing very nicely,” he underlined.
Questions over his condition and role are growing increasingly fraught, with Iran facing critical decisions over a war that has set the Middle East aflame while trashing the country’s already fragile economy.
Iranian officials and other senior sources in the country say Khamenei remains in control, ruling from the shadows for security reasons as he recovers from disfiguring wounds while delegating broad daily authority to a coterie of top figures.
Top officials and other insiders attribute Khamenei’s absence to assassination fears and say he holds frequent meetings with top figures, receives all major reports and takes the final decisions on every important issue.
Even before the war, Khamenei preferred a backroom role as his father’s top aide, shunning public attention.
On July 21, Iran president Masoud Pezeshkian said interactions with the supreme leader were “increasing day by day”, but in early August he said communicating with Khamenei was “very difficult”.
The late July meeting covered military affairs and the economy, including securing resources, managing foreign exchange and energy use, as well as economic ties with foreign partners, according to state media.
In May, state media also reported that Pezeshkian had met Khamenei for several hours, in what was then the first publicly reported meeting between the two since Khamenei became supreme leader.
Early this month, US president Donald Trump said that nobody knew who was running Iran during the US-Israeli war with Iran, now in its eighth month.
“Their leaders are gone, their second group of leaders are gone, and the biggest problem I have is nobody knows who the hell is running the country,” Trump said.
US vice president JD Vance said the US was in talks with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi. But it was unclear how much authority they wield within Iran’s power structure.
“One of the things we picked up on is it’s not totally clear how their country makes decisions,” Vance said.
Countering the charge, Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson said that US officials are well aware of who their Iranian counterparts are and how Iran’s decision-making system works.
