New Delhi: Iran’s new Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei is “very healthy, and in very good condition” though it is not known if “he has lost his leg”, his representative in India Dr. Abdul Majid Hakeem Illahi has said, dismissing reports of severe injuries in Israeli-US strikes.
He said the Supreme Leader remains active but out of public view due to security concerns.
“He’s healthy and what happened to him we don’t know exactly. He’s meeting officials and spokesperson of the parliament. I do not know if he has lost his leg but he is healthy,” Illahi said at ThePrint’s “Off the Cuff” event in Gurugram on Monday.
He also revealed that the new leader is a close friend of his, with their relationship going more than three decades back to their time as classmates.
“I was his classmate, maybe for more than 30 years. I know him very well. After we finished (college), we both became lecturers, so every other week I would meet him. He is very wise, very hardworking,” Illahi said.
He further sought to clarify Khamenei’s health status. “He also sent a letter to his (another) friend using his right hand, which was seen by me and I am familiar with his handwriting and I know that the statements he issues are by him since I am familiar with his literature.”
Illahi also refuted a 23 April report by The New York Times that described Khamenei as seriously wounded.
“One leg was operated on three times, and he is awaiting a prosthetic. He had surgery on one hand and is slowly regaining function. His face and lips have been burnt severely, making it difficult for him to speak,” officials quoted in the report said, adding that “eventually, he will need plastic surgery.”
Citing several anonymous Iranian officials, the report further said Khamenei had “at least for now” delegated decision-making to generals in the Revolutionary Guards’ ideological Army, though he remains “mentally sharp”.
It also noted that unlike his father, Ali Khamenei, who “exerted absolute power over all decisions about war, peace and negotiations with the United States”, his successor “does not play the same role.”
Iranian state television and the state news agency IRNA have referred to Mojtaba Khamenei as a “wounded war veteran” supreme leader. A statement from Komiteh Emdad, a powerful government religious charity, congratulating him called him a “janbaz jang,” the Persian term for a veteran wounded in war, according to the report.
In March, when Iranian local media asked Ministry of Foreign Affairs Spokesperson Esmail Baghaei whether Mojtaba Khamenei had formally assumed his role as the country’s top religious and political authority and commander-in-chief of the armed forces, he declined to answer directly, saying only, “Those who have to receive the message have received the message.”
Ali Khamenei was assassinated in US-Israeli strikes on 28 February. According to Illahi, he had refused to leave his office and take shelter despite imminent threats to life.
“I asked the security of the Supreme Leader myself and I even asked Ali Larijani who said that two days before the war, ‘I went to the Supreme Leaders’ office and asked him to take shelter somewhere else and the Supreme Leader laughed and said how can I hide myself when poor soldiers are fighting’. I can never do that. If you can build 90 million bunkers for Iranians, you can then perhaps build a common one for me,” Illahi said.
Ali Larijani, the former chief of Iran’s supreme national security council, was killed in Israeli strikes on 17 March.
(Edited by Ajeet Tiwari)
