‘Beyond weird’: CIA, Mossad said seeking signs of Mojtaba Khamenei, who remains unseen

Two weeks after son of slain supreme leader Ali Khamenei was chosen to succeed him, intelligence agencies trying to assess his condition and whether he’s in charge, Axios reports

Two weeks after Mojtaba Khamenei was chosen to succeed his father as Iran’s supreme leader, US and Israeli intelligence agencies are reportedly still trying to detect signs of him.

Khamenei’s father, Ali Khamenei, was killed on February 28, the first day of US-Israeli strikes on Iran. The younger Khamenei is believed to have been injured in that strike, but the extent of his injuries is unclear.

He has yet to appear in public in any form since he was tapped to lead Iran on March 8. His purported first statement was delivered by a TV presenter, rather than via audio or video of Khamenei himself.

Now, the US Central Intelligence Agency, Israel’s Mossad and other intelligence agencies are looking for signs that he is, in fact, alive and running the Islamic Republic, according to the Axios news site.

Khamenei is presumed to be eschewing appearances of any kind in order to lower his chances of being assassinated or to avoid showing his injury, Axios reported. The report said some intelligence indicates that he is still alive, such as Iranian officials trying to schedule meetings with him.

The report said the spy agencies were on the lookout for Khamenei to release a video statement for the Iranian holiday of Nowruz last week, as his father traditionally did. Instead, a written statement was ultimately issued.

“We have no evidence that he is really the one giving orders,” a senior Israeli official said, according to Axios, while a US official described the situation as “beyond weird.”

“We don’t think the Iranians would have gone through all this trouble to choose a dead guy as the supreme leader, but at the same time, we have no proof that he is taking the helm,” the US official added.

In his written Nowruz message, marking the start of the Persian New Year, Khamenei heralded the year of a “resistance economy under national unity and national security.”

In the statement, released on his Telegram channel, Khamenei said that recent attacks against Turkey and Oman were not carried out by Iran or its allied forces.

A US official told Axios that the CIA is working to verify whether photos of Khamenei that were released alongside his Nowruz note were taken recently. The official noted that Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, who also faces the threat of assassination, put out a video statement.

“We would have expected to see Mojtaba too in some form. He didn’t take advantage of the opportunity and tradition,” the official said. “It’s a big red flag.”

Days after the younger Khamenei was chosen as supreme leader, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said he had been “wounded and likely disfigured” in the February 28 attack.

Since then, Israel and the US have killed a series of Iran’s top officials, including Ali Larijani, secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, whom Israel described as Iran’s “de facto leader.”

“Their leaders are all gone,” US President Donald Trump said on Friday. “The next set of leaders are all gone. And the next set of leaders are mostly gone. And now, nobody wants to be a leader over there anymore. We’re having a hard time. We want to talk to them and there’s nobody to talk to. We have nobody to talk to. And you know what, we like it that way.”