By Enyichukwu Enemanna
Iran’s new supreme leader Mojtaba Khamenei, who has not spoken or been seen in public since his appointment at the weekend has sustained injuries but “safe”, officials said Wednesday.
“I heard news that Mr Mojtaba Khamenei had been injured. I have asked some friends who had connections,” the Iranian president’s son, Yousef Pezeshkian, wrote in a post on his Telegram channel.
“They told me that, thank God, he is safe and sound,” Pezeshkian, who is a government advisor added.
Khamenei was named Iran’s supreme leader on Sunday to replace his father Ali who was assassinated in an air strike at the beginning of the US-Israeli war against the Islamic republic on February 28.
“He was also there and he was injured in that bombardment but I haven’t seen that reflected in the foreign news,” Tehran’s ambassador to Cyprus, Alireza Salarian, told The Guardian newspaper on Wednesday.
The strike on the compound in central Tehran also killed other members of the Khamenei family, including Mojtaba’s wife and mother, l Iranian authorities report.
There had been mounting questions about Mojtaba Khamenei’s health, and even speculation online that he might have died along with his relatives.
State television had called him a “wounded veteran of the Ramadan war” without giving details, in reference to the conflict which broke out during the Muslim holy month.
His face has appeared on giant billboards in Tehran, with one showing him symbolically receiving the national flag from his father Ali while the founding leader of the Islamic republic, Ruhollah Khomeini, looks on.
