Mojtaba Khamenei was pulled from the rubble of a bombed Tehran hospital after U.S. And Israeli strikes nearly killed him a second time, an Iranian cleric revealed in a television interview this week.
Mohsen Heydari, a member of Iran’s Assembly of Experts, told Qatari network Al Araby on Thursday that the younger Khamenei, 56, had already been wounded and hospitalized following the February strikes that killed his father, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, 86. The allies then bombed three hospitals in Tehran on Feb. 28, and Mojtaba Khamenei was in the third one when it was hit.
“Even after he had been wounded and taken to the hospital, three hospitals in Tehran were bombed,” Heydari said in the interview.
“Mojtaba Khamenei was in the third hospital and was pulled from the rubble.”
Heydari’s account marks the first detailed public description of what happened to Mojtaba Khamenei after the strikes that decapitated Iran’s leadership. The cleric said the younger Khamenei then vanished to an unknown location and has not been seen in public or heard from since.
The bombing of the hospitals came after the allies obliterated Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s Tehran compound, killing the supreme leader and dozens of his top leaders. The Assembly of Experts, the body tasked with choosing Iran’s new supreme leader, was also targeted. Its Qom Secretariat was bombed, killing eight people and burning reports and recommendations on a successor.
With their formal process shattered, the assembly members improvised. Each wrote their vote on paper before being summoned to a secret room, without being told the location or nature of the meeting in advance, a week after the first strikes.
Heydari was the first to suggest Mojtaba Khamenei’s name during that session, directly defying President Trump, who had warned Iran against choosing the late supreme leader’s son. Trump considered the younger Khamenei an even harder hardliner than his father.
“Given the enemy’s position, we will choose and elect no one as leader and supreme guide of the Islamic Republic except Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei,” Heydari recalled saying in the Al Araby interview.
“We obtained information that Mojtaba Khamenei was healthy and able to lead, and we determined that he met the requirements of religious qualification, justice and competence to manage the country,” he continued.
Khamenei received 50 of 59 votes during the meeting. Eight members voted for Ayatollah Alireza Arafi, and one abstained.
Heydari described the new supreme leader as a “man of the shadows” who never held a political position within the Iranian state before taking power but had reportedly served as an adviser to his father. The cleric also claimed Mojtaba Khamenei had no idea he had been tapped as supreme leader on March 8 until the announcement was broadcast publicly on state TV, and that he was then “legally and religiously” obligated to accept.
Speculation about Mojtaba Khamenei’s condition has persisted for months. U.S. Intelligence reports have suggested he was badly disfigured in the attacks. Last month, President Trump addressed the rumors directly when asked about his condition.
“I don’t think he’s dead,” Trump said.
“He was very seriously wounded. The left side of his body, the arm, the leg, the whole thing. He was very seriously wounded, but I don’t think he’s dead,” he added.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian offered a starkly different assessment during an interview on Fox News this week while in New York City for the UN General Assembly. Pezeshkian claimed the out-of-sight supreme leader was “completely” healthy and described a lengthy meeting between the two leaders last month.
“We met for about seven hours,” the Iranian president told “Special Report” host Bret Baier. “We conducted talks.”