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Iran’s new Supreme Leader is reportedly in a coma after being seriously injured in airstrikes.
Mojtaba Khamenei is said to have lost at least one leg and suffered severe stomach or liver damage during the strikes.
According to the UK newspapers The Sun and Daily Mail, the new leader is currently receiving intensive care at Sina University Hospital in the historic quarter of Tehran. Security forces have reportedly sealed off part of the hospital.
A source, who asked not to be named for fear of retaliation, said the Supreme Leader is under the care of Mohammad Reza Zafargjani, Iran’s Minister of Health, Treatment and Medical Education, and one of the country’s leading trauma surgeons.
Zafargjani’s Persian Wikipedia page states that he gained eight years of surgical experience during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s. The doctor, who is reportedly trusted by the regime, was himself injured by chemical weapons during the conflict.
He is believed to be assisted by another senior surgeon, Dr Mohammad Marashi, the brother of the wife of former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and a figure reportedly trusted within the Islamic Republic.
The wounded Supreme Leader is also said to have been visited by current Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian two days ago. The president is believed to be receiving regular briefings on Khamenei’s condition.
The source reportedly told The Sun through encrypted messages sent to an exiled dissident based in London: “One or two of his legs have been cut off. His liver or stomach has also ruptured. He is apparently in a coma as well.”
While the new Supreme Leader has not been seen in public for weeks, Iran is reportedly being run by regional commanders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, who are believed to have been ordered to continue the conflict indefinitely.
