Iran installed a new Supreme Leader. He may not know it. Sources tell The Sun that Mojtaba Khamenei, 56-year-old son of the assassinated Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is lying in intensive care at Sina University Hospital in Tehran, reportedly in a coma, having lost at least one leg in the same airstrike that killed his father on February 28. Iranian state TV, rather than showing him, read his first official statement from behind a news anchor's desk. The man supposedly commanding one of the world's most dangerous regimes has not appeared in public once since taking power.
The regime calls him the "Jaanbaz of Ramadan." That's Iranian state media's own term, meaning a wounded war veteran. Iran's state television has not confirmed the hospitalization, but its use of that phrase confirms his injury. They cannot hide what their own language reveals.
A source inside Tehran, smuggling information past Iran's near-total internet blackout to an exiled Iranian dissident in London, passed along a grim account of the new Supreme Leader's condition.
One or two of his legs have been cut off. His liver or stomach has also ruptured. He is apparently in a coma as well.
It remains unclear whether Mojtaba was injured on the same day his 86-year-old father died, February 28, but he is not directing the strategy currently sparking energy market turmoil.
The source said the new Supreme Leader is in intensive care at Sina University Hospital, with a section of the building sealed off and heavy security present. He named the doctor overseeing Mojtaba's care as Mohammad-Reza Zafarghandi, Iran's top trauma surgeon and also the Minister of Health, Treatment and Medical Education. The 70-year-old surgeon is well-versed in treating war injuries, having operated during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s.
Other sources alleged that Mojtaba is entirely unaware of the ongoing war, the deaths of family members, and even his own election as Supreme Leader. That detail cannot be independently confirmed. The Sun itself conceded that because of the internet blackout in Iran, it is not possible to verify the account. But the pattern of behavior, a supreme leader with no public appearances, no address, no statement delivered in his own voice, leaves little room for optimistic interpretation.
An Israeli government source was more direct:
It is absolutely irrefutable that Mojtaba Khamenei has been wounded. But his condition actually has little bearing on the course of the war as he is a puppet put in place by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. They hold the power now and they are running Iran.
The installation of Mojtaba Khamenei was not a clean religious transition. It was a power grab with a clerical veneer.
Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps forced through the choice of Mojtaba Khamenei as the new supreme leader, seeing him as a more pliant version of his father who would back their hardline policies. Already very powerful, the IRGC gained yet greater sway since the war began and quickly overcame the misgivings of senior political and clerical figures whose opposition delayed the announcement by hours.
Members of the Assembly of Experts described the atmosphere of the online meeting as "unnatural." Those who presented arguments against Mojtaba Khamenei were given limited time to speak, discussion was cut off, and a vote was held.
This is the Islamic Republic's version of democratic legitimacy. Mojtaba's own father was reportedly deeply opposed to his son's appointment, fearing it would bring back a monarchy-like structure to the Islamic regime. "Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was not pleased with the idea of his son's leadership and never allowed this issue to be raised during his lifetime," one Assembly member said. The IRGC installed him anyway.
As Alex Vatanka, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, put it: "Mojtaba owes his position to the Revolutionary Guards and as such he is not going to be as supreme as his father was."
Here is what makes this situation genuinely dangerous: it does not matter.
The late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei spent years preparing for exactly this scenario. He watched what happened in 2003 when US forces conquered Iraq by capturing and killing Saddam Hussein and his top lieutenants. He appointed Major General Mohammad Ali Jafari, who spent the next four years devising a contingency plan. Jafari divided Iran, a country seven times bigger than the UK, into 31 autonomous command centers of the all-powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Iranian sources and analysts revealed that these self-governing commands are now running Iran's war and suppressing dissent without directions from a leader in capital Tehran.
An exiled Iranian analyst, who asked not to be identified for fear of reprisals, described it plainly:
His father left behind a system which has kicked into gear which can be run by a ghost. That is why Iran's missiles and drones are still flying and it's why the war will go on.
The IRGC has said it has enough supplies to continue its drone and missile attacks across the region for up to six months. Mojtaba's condition is irrelevant to that math.
Before this week, most of the world had never heard Mojtaba Khamenei speak. That was by design.
Over two decades, Mojtaba emerged as one of the most influential yet least publicly visible figures in the Iranian state. His authority derived not from elected office but from his role inside the Supreme Leader's compound, where he functioned as a gatekeeper to his father, managing access, filtering political actors, and coordinating with security institutions.
He joined the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in 1987 and served in the Iran-Iraq War, The U.S. Sun reported. He took control of the Basij paramilitary volunteer militia in 2009. He is not a religious scholar elevated to power through theological merit. He is a security operative with a clerical title.
In 2019, the United States sanctioned Mojtaba under Executive Order 13867. The U.S. Treasury Department said he had been "representing the supreme leader in an official capacity despite never being elected or appointed to a government position aside from work in the office of his father."
Analysts who know his record are not reassuring. One analyst described him as "a deeply antisemitic, anti-American, and anti-Western ideologue" who "has personally been involved in repression in Iran and terror plots abroad." Another put it more succinctly: "Mojtaba is his father on steroids. He's certainly no MBS."
In a move that raised more questions than it answered, Iranian state TV broadcast what they claim to be Mojtaba's first statement since coming into power. The statement, read out by a news anchor, said Iran will not hesitate to "avenge the blood of Iranians" and vowed to continue attacks on Dubai while threatening to block the vital Strait of Hormuz.
He was not on screen. An exiled Iranian analyst told The Sun: "Mojtaba Khamenei has not spoken since his father was killed. He has not appeared at all on TV. He has not issued any kind of statement or said a single word. There has been no stirring address to the armed forces he now commands, and that has fuelled speculation that he is seriously wounded or even dead."
Let that sink in. A regime threatening to close the Strait of Hormuz and spark a global energy crisis is being steered by men whose figurehead leader may not be conscious enough to know the war is happening.
This is precisely what makes the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps so dangerous, and why targeting Iran's leadership structure was never going to be enough on its own. Khamenei's selection, engineered by the IRGC, may add up to a more aggressive stance abroad and sterner internal repression. Senior Iranian sources fear the IRGC's domination of the system would further transform the Islamic Republic into a military state with only a thin veneer of religious legitimacy.
The clerical window dressing is collapsing. What remains is a heavily armed military apparatus that answers to no parliament, no electorate, and increasingly, no supreme leader. The IRGC has told the world it has enough supplies to continue drone and missile attacks for up to six months. The drones do not require Mojtaba Khamenei to be awake.
Iran built a war machine designed to outlive its own leadership. It is running now, on autopilot, threatening global energy markets and regional stability, led by a ghost. The world should take that seriously.
