A senior Israeli security official said Iran’s new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, was injured in the leg in the first day of strikes.
Iran’s new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, sustained injuries in the opening hours of the joint U.S.–Israeli military operations against Iran, according to Israeli assessments.
A senior Israeli security official told Epoch Magazine in Israel that Israel had received indications that Khamenei—the son of late supreme leader Ali Khamenei—sustained injuries to his leg during strikes targeting his father’s bunker. The younger Khamenei was injured the same day his father was killed.
The Israeli security official said the severity of Mojtaba Khamenei’s injury is unclear at this stage.
Iran’s new supreme leader, who was elected on March 8 in a vote of Iran’s Assembly of Experts, has yet to issue a public statement since his appointment.
Mojtaba Khamenei is Iran’s third supreme leader since the 1979 Islamic Revolution that ushered in the country’s current theocratic constitution.
Israeli security officials have assessed that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) preferred the younger Khamenei to succeed his father, as opposed to other candidates with more extensive religious and jurisprudential credentials.
Those Israeli officials said they believe that Mojtaba Khamenei will also take a hard-line position and will seek to prolong the current fighting with Israeli and U.S. forces, especially to drive up the human and economic costs of the conflict.
“Every leader appointed by the Iranian terror regime to continue and lead the program for the destruction of Israel, to threaten the United States and the free world and the countries of the region, and to suppress the Iranian people—will be an unequivocal target for elimination,” Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said in a March 4 post on X.
“It doesn’t matter what his name is or the place where he hides.”
Last week, Israeli forces carried out strikes on the Iranian city of Qom, targeting a building used by the 88-member Assembly of Experts. Israeli security officials told Epoch Magazine that the attack was meant to take place as the assembly was preparing to vote on Iran’s next leader. Iranian media reported that the assembly was not present at the time of the attack.
By Ryan Morgan
