Free Republic

WASHINGTON — Iran’s mysterious, “probably gay” supreme leader is so elusive that even his own president isn’t convinced he met him in a bizarre one-on-one in the back of a dark car. Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian was whisked to a secret location in Tehran, shoved into the back seat of a dark car with blacked-out windows and told he was sitting next to Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei — except he never actually saw the man, according to a bombshell report from Iran International. The bizarre cloak-and-dagger meeting reportedly lasted just a few minutes, not the cozy two-and-a-half-hour sit-down Pezeshkian bragged...

US intelligence briefings cited by The New York Times on Friday indicate that Iran’s new Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, displays a far greater willingness to build nuclear weaponry than his father who preceded him. His father, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who died in joint US-Israeli airstrikes during the opening phase of the war, had maintained a long-standing fatwa (religious decree) against weaponization. While American analysts previously maintained that Tehran sought the threshold capacity to assemble a device, many considered the former leader's religious reluctance genuine. The younger Khamenei has avoided explicit public calls for a nuclear arsenal, noted The New...

Iran is avoiding a broad, direct attack on Israel because it fears Israeli strikes on senior regime figures and institutions vital to its survival, Iran researcher Beni Sabti told 103FM on Sunday. Sabti, an Iran researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies, spoke with Ron Kofman and Prof. Aryeh Eldad following an Al Hadath report citing an Israeli security source who said that Iranian Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei was not in the Islamic Republic. ***“The Iranian regime fears our involvement because they know that we are going straight to the center. We are targeting the most important part and...

According to an Israeli security official, Iran's new supreme leader is no longer in the country, while Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander Ahmad Vahidi and other senior officials are drafting statements in his name. The official also claimed the US does not want Israel to participate in offensive operations, even if the Iranian regime attacks it. Saudi broadcaster Al Hadath reported Sunday, citing an Israeli security official, that Iranian Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei is not in Iran. According to the report, the new leader's complete disconnection from events on the ground means that all statements and written messages recently issued...

Iran pledged to avenge the assassination of former supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in a written statement attributed to Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei on Saturday. “We pledge to avenge your pure blood and the blood of all the martyrs of these two wars by holding their criminal and disgraced killers accountable,” the statement read, adding that such vengeance was “the demand of [the Iranian] nation.” The statement went on to threaten the “criminals,” saying they “will take their dream of dying peacefully in their beds with them to their graves.” “They must understand that this matter does not depend upon...

Iranian security officials have rejected Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei’s request to attend the burial of his slain father and predecessor, Ali Khamenei, because they fear Israel will kill the son or track him back to his hiding spot, The New York Times reported Saturday. Mojtaba Khamenei seeks to attend his father’s July 9 burial in Mashhad and perform funeral rites, but has so far been refused, the Times said, citing two unnamed Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps members and a person involved with planning the multi-day funeral that began on Saturday. Khamenei has not been seen in public since he was...

He’s still AWOL. Iran’s “probably gay” and badly disfigured new supreme leader has reportedly been barred from showing up at his own father’s funeral. Mojtaba Khamenei asked to perform rites over his father Ali Khamenei’s dead body, when the late ayatollah is set to be buried in his hometown of Mashhad on July 9 wrapping up the dayslong state funeral. But security officials told him no deal, according to two members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps who spoke to the New York Times. Khamenei’s security team reportedly believes Israel would try to assassinate him if he shows his face...

Khamenei said that he eventually approved the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) based only on a series of promises from Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and the negotiating team. Iranian Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei said that Iran will not submit to the "excessive demands" of the United States in future negotiations with the US in a series of posts on X/Twitter on Thursday. Khamenei said that he eventually approved the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) based only on a series of promises from Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and the negotiating team.

Reports emerging from the region suggest that Iran’s leadership may be divided over a proposed deal with the United States, raising new doubts about whether an agreement can be finalized. According to the reports, Iranian negotiators had signaled that the deal was ready to move forward. However, Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei has reportedly refused to approve the proposal. The reported rejection comes after claims that senior Iranian officials, including Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, had presented the agreement as essentially ready without securing final approval from Khamenei. If accurate, the development could point to a...

One hundred days after former Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was killed in an attack on his office in Tehran, the Islamic Republic has yet to bury the man who led the country for more than three decades. The delay has become one of the most unusual and politically sensitive aspects of Iran's post-war transition. While senior military commanders and officials killed in the same conflict have already been buried, repeated promises of a massive funeral for Khamenei have so far gone unfulfilled. Tehran municipal officials spoke of plans for a multi-day funeral procession later this month. Ceremonies, they said, are...

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian sent a letter to Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei's office submitting his resignation, London-based anti-regime outlet Iran International reported on Sunday. An anonymous official told Iran International that the letter had called out the fact that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps had effectively taken over large portions of the government, and that the president and other high-ranking officials had been cut out of vital decision-making. Pezeshkian, the letter emphasized, was unable to run the government or fulfill his responsibilities under the circumstances, and as such, requested to resign. Anonymous sources told Iran International that the primary source...

Tehran: Iranian authorities have dismissed a report claiming Iran's President Masoud Pezeshkian has sought to step down in protest over the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' (IRGC) unchecked dominance in Tehran's wartime decision-making. The rebuttal came after UK-based Iran International reported that Pezeshkian had submitted his resignation to Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, saying that the elected government has effectively been excluded from vital decision-making processes in the country and that the vacuum created by this situation has enabled hardline factions within the IRGC to take control of affairs. Citing an informed government source, the IRGC-affiliated Tasnim News Agency reported that the...

Iran to halt message exchanges with US over Israel's strikes on Lebanon, Iranian media says Iran is halting its indirect talks with U.S. negotiators in protest against Israel's attacks on Hezbollah in Lebanon, Iranian state-linked media reported Monday. Iran's Tasnim news agency, linked to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, reported that Tehran is cutting off talks due to the "continued crimes of the Zionist regime in Lebanon." The report comes after Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi posted to social media saying Lebanon must be included in the ongoing ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran. "The United States and Israel bear...

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has submitted an official letter of resignation to the Office of the Supreme Leader, a source familiar with the matter told Iran International. In the letter sent on Sunday, Pezeshkian stressed that the president and the government have effectively been excluded from major and vital decision-making processes in the country, and that the vacuum created by this situation has enabled hardline factions within the IRGC to take control of affairs, the source said. Pezeshkian added that under such circumstances he is unable to run the government and carry out his legal responsibilities, and for that reason...

The world's diplomatic attention is fixed on Pakistan, on ceasefire memoranda, on whether Mojtaba Khamenei will emerge from hiding long enough to initial a document. In that distraction, Israel has done something strategically significant in Lebanon that has received almost no serious analysis (but was highlighted on Arutz Sheva). It has crossed the Litani River. Israeli forces have advanced beyond the Litani, a line that for decades functioned as an unofficial boundary in southern Lebanon. Troops are now pushing northward toward the Zahrani River, roughly ten kilometers away. The IDF has declared the entire area between the two rivers an...

Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of Iran, is following in his father’s footsteps when it comes to attacking the Jewish state. Khamenei’s official social media account on Tuesday posted a series of posts against Israel, including one describing it as a “cancerous tumor" and one predicting the end of Israel. “The shaken Zionist regime and the cancerous tumor of Israel are approaching the final stages of their wretched existence," read one post. A subsequent post said, “By God’s grace - and in accordance with the decisive and forward-looking words of our martyred Leader ten years ago - the Zionist...

Iran's new leader Mojtaba Khamenei follows in his father’s footsteps with a series of anti-Israel posts on social media.

Peace talks between the United States and Iran have crashed and burned like an Iranian F-14 that just ran across the gunsights of an American F-22. The Iranian regime seems to be stuck on the same line in the sand that President Trump won't back down on, and that's their nuclear program, despite the president's earlier optimistic tone on that condition. On Monday, there surfaced some reports that experts familiar with Iran are saying that there may be indications of a bug-out about to get underway. The apparent collapse of high-stakes U.S.-Iran negotiations has intensified fears that senior figures inside...

Germany’s Chancellor, Friedrich Merz, attacked Trump over the war in Iran. Trump responded by withdrawing 5,000 troops from Germany. The attack was a foolish thing for Merz to have done, but perhaps given the state of Islamic control over German society, he felt he had no other choice. It all started last Monday, when Merz announced that the U.S. was losing in Iran and essentially demanded that the U.S. beat a speedy retreat: “ The problem with conflicts like this is always you don’t just have to get in – you have to get out again. We saw that very...

Iran’s severely injured supreme leader remained defiant Thursday as he vowed to protect the Islamic Republic’s nuclear and missile capabilities — warning that America’s only place in the Gulf was “at the bottom of its waters.” Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, who has yet to be seen since becoming the supreme leader following his father’s death, issued another statement via state media rejecting President Trump’s peace terms and the American naval blockade on Iran’s ports. “Ninety million proud and honorable Iranians inside and outside the country regard all of Iran’s identity-based, spiritual, human, scientific, industrial and technological capacities — from nanotechnology and...