Iran's New Supreme Leader Suffered Leg Wounds in Strike That Killed His Father

Iran's newly installed supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, sustained leg injuries in the strikes that killed his father on February 28, according to Iranian and Israeli officials, a revelation that helps explain his complete absence from public view since his appointment.

The 88-member Assembly of Experts elected Mojtaba Khamenei as supreme leader late Sunday, three days after Israeli air strikes on a leadership compound in central Tehran killed his father, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The same daytime attack also killed Mojtaba's mother, wife and a son, along with several top Iranian defense officials, according to Iranian authorities and reporting by the Irish Times and Reuters.

Two unnamed Israeli military officials said intelligence gathered by Israel led the country's defense establishment to conclude that Khamenei suffered leg injuries on February 28, a judgment they reached before his selection as supreme leader. Three anonymous Iranian officials separately told journalists that concern about revealing his location through any communication has kept him in silence, sheltering at a highly secure facility with limited communications.

Iranian state media provided the clearest public signal of the injury without acknowledging it directly. State television and the state news agency IRNA both referred to Mojtaba Khamenei as the "wounded war veteran" supreme leader, using the Persian term "janbaz." Komiteh Emdad, a powerful government religious charity, went further, congratulating him using the phrase "janbaz jang," meaning a veteran wounded in war.

Two named Iranian officials have acknowledged the injury without denying it. Yousef Pezeshkian, son of the Iranian president and a government adviser, posted on Telegram: "I heard news that Mr Mojtaba Khamenei had been injured. I have asked some friends who had connections. They told me that, thank God, he is safe and sound." Tehran's ambassador to Cyprus, Alireza Salarian, was more direct. "He was also there and he was injured in that bombardment but I haven't seen that reflected in the foreign news," he told The Guardian.

A source familiar with the matter told the Jerusalem Post that assessments indicate Khamenei "remains capable of carrying out his duties and managing state affairs," though no photograph or video of the new supreme leader has been released since his appointment, fueling speculation. Reuters noted it has not been able to independently confirm his condition, and no medical records or hospital confirmation have been provided by any source.

The political stakes surrounding the succession run well beyond his physical condition. Reuters reported that some senior Iranian sources fear the selection, which they described as engineered by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, could accelerate Iran's transformation into a military-dominated state with a thinner veneer of religious legitimacy and a more aggressive posture abroad.

Although Mojtaba Khamenei spent decades running his father's office and wielded considerable backroom influence, he remains an obscure figure to many Iranians. His first days as supreme leader have been defined by silence enforced partly by injury and partly by the fear of assassination, a reality that underscores how profoundly the opening of the war has already destabilized the Islamic Republic's leadership structure.