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Iran’s new supreme leader Mojtaba Khamenei, who has not spoken or been seen in public since his appointment at the weekend, is injured but “safe,” officials said on Wednesday.
“I heard news that Mr Mojtaba Khamenei had been injured. I have asked some friends who had connections,” the Iranian president’s son, Yousef Pezeshkian, wrote in a post on his Telegram channel.
“They told me that, thank God, he is safe and sound,” added Pezeshkian, who is a government advisor.
Khamenei was named Iran’s supreme leader on Sunday to replace his father Ali who was assassinated in an air strike at the start of the US-Israeli war against the Islamic republic on Feb.28.
Quoting three unnamed Iranian officials, The New York Times also reported on Wednesday that Khamenei “had suffered injuries, including to his legs, but that he was alert and sheltering at a highly secure location with limited communication.”
Two Israeli military officials also told the newspaper that their intelligence services believed Khamenei had suffered leg injuries.
Given that the new Iranian commander-in-chief instantly became a target for assassination by the United States and Israel at the weekend, analysts said he would remain out of public view for some time.
“He was also there and he was injured in that bombardment but I haven’t seen that reflected in the foreign news,” Tehran’s ambassador to Cyprus, Alireza Salarian, told The Guardian newspaper on Wednesday.
The strike on the compound in central Tehran also killed other members of the Khamenei family, including Mojtaba’s wife and mother, according to Iranian authorities.
There had been mounting questions about Mojtaba Khamenei’s health, and even speculation online that he might have died along with his relatives.
State television had called him a “wounded veteran of the Ramadan war” without giving details, in reference to the conflict which broke out during the Muslim holy month.
His face has appeared on giant billboards in Tehran, with one showing him symbolically receiving the national flag from his father Ali while the founding leader of the Islamic republic, Ruhollah Khomeini, looks on.
Posters of him were brandished by thousands of pro-government demonstrators at a huge rally in central Tehran on Monday.
But night-time cries of “Death to Mojtaba!” in the capital have also underlined public opposition to a figure believed to have played a key role in repressing waves of anti-government protests since 2009.
Agence France-Presse
