Dead, Disfigured or Just Hiding? How US Intelligence Has Kept Changing Its Story on Mojtaba Khamenei

Since the US-Israeli strikes of February 28, 2026 killed his father Ali Khamenei and destroyed much of Iran's senior leadership, Mojtaba Khamenei has not made a single live public appearance and the intelligence trickling out of Washington has been anything but consistent.

In the immediate aftermath, Iran's foreign ministry confirmed he was wounded but insisted his condition was stable. Iran's ambassador to Cyprus, Alireza Salarian, said: "I have heard that he was injured in his legs, hand and arm. I think he is in the hospital." Tehran did not deny the injuries but said he was "doing well."

Then the accounts darkened sharply. Sources told British tabloids he had lost one or both legs and sustained severe abdominal or liver injuries, and was receiving intensive care at Sina University Hospital in Tehran, with Iran's own Health Minister (a leading trauma surgeon) overseeing his treatment personally. The word "coma" entered the picture.

On March 13, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told a Pentagon press conference that Khamenei was " wounded and likely disfigured ." Days later came an even more dramatic twist: reports emerged that Putin had personally invited Khamenei to Russia for surgery during a March 10 phone call, and that the Supreme Leader had been secretly evacuated to Moscow , recovering at one of Putin's presidential residences.

By April, the narrative shifted again. A US-Israeli intelligence memo obtained by The Times stated Khamenei was being treated in Qom in a "severe condition, unable to be involved in any decision-making." Iran pushed back with an AI-generated video of Khamenei in a military control room widely dismissed as manufactured.

Now, as the nuclear deal talks near a conclusion, US intelligence says he is alive, hidden in an undisclosed fortified location , reachable only through a courier labyrinth with every message to him arriving stale, and every response delayed. Whether dead, comatose, disfigured, or simply in hiding, one thing is clear: nobody outside his innermost circle actually knows.