Iran Downplays Strike on Supreme Leader
Last update: May 25, 2026
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Haven’t seen him in public for months, but Tehran insists Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei is doing just fine after February’s US-Israel strike.
An Iranian health ministry official has pushed back on speculation about the supreme leader’s condition, saying on Monday that Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei’s injuries from a US-Israeli strike in late February were “superficial” .
The 56-year-old hasn’t been seen publicly since he was named Iran’s supreme leader on March 8. He’s only issued written statements since then, which has fuelled plenty of rumours about his health. Back in March, US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth said Mojtaba was “believed to be alive, wounded and disfigured”.
Mojtaba took over after his father, Ali Khamenei, was killed in US-Israeli strikes on February 28. Those strikes kicked off a wave of retaliatory Iranian attacks across the region.
Health ministry spokesman Hossein Kermanpour gave a rare play-by-play of that day to cbinews.tv. He said Mojtaba arrived at an unnamed hospital around 1:00 pm Tehran time on February 28 and “entered the operating room along with several other wounded individuals”.
“From my perspective as a physician these were not considered serious injuries and required no special procedures apart from one or two stitches,” Kermanpour said.
He added that Mojtaba was fasting for Ramadan at the time and “refused to break his fast and kept fasting until iftar, which itself showed his good health.”
According to Kermanpour, the supreme leader was discharged at around 2:00 am on March 1, though he didn’t say where he went afterwards.
Despite his absence from public view, Iranian officials say he’s still active. President Masoud Pezeshkian said he met with Mojtaba on May 7 for two and a half hours. And three days later, Iranian state TV reported that the head of Iran’s military central command, Ali Abdollahi, met with him to receive “new directives and guidance for the continuation of operations to confront the enemy.”
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