Iran's new Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei sustained severe facial and leg injuries during the joint U.S.-Israel airstrikes on Tehran on February 28 and has not been seen publicly since, Reuters reported Saturday, citing three anonymous sources within his inner circle. The report lands weeks after War Secretary Pete Hegseth first told reporters on March 13 that Khamenei was "likely disfigured", a claim he has since repeated and sharpened from the Pentagon podium.
The same strikes killed Khamenei's father, former Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Hosseini Khamenei. The younger Khamenei, the ayatollah's second son, assumed power in the aftermath of a campaign that, by Hegseth's own accounting, systematically dismantled Iran's senior military and political leadership.
The picture that emerges, from Reuters' sourcing, Hegseth's public statements, and the Iranian regime's own conspicuous silence, is of a new supreme leader who is recovering out of sight, communicating only through written statements, and presiding over a government that may not fully know who is in charge.
Fox News reported that Reuters, citing three sources described as being within Khamenei's inner circle, said the new supreme leader was severely disfigured after sustaining leg and face injuries during the February 28 airstrikes. The sources reportedly said Khamenei remains "mentally sharp" and is in communication with the Iranian delegation now in Islamabad, Pakistan, for peace talks with a U.S. delegation led by Vice President JD Vance.
Reuters' sources indicated Khamenei could enter the public spotlight in "a month or two" if "his health and the security situation allowed." That conditional language speaks volumes. Weeks have already passed since the strikes, and the regime has produced no video, no audio, and no photograph of the man who supposedly leads the Islamic Republic.
The last publicly available image of Mojtaba Khamenei dates to October 13, 2024, when he attended a meeting in Tehran, months before the airstrikes that fractured Iran's power structure from the top down.
Hegseth did not wait for Reuters to confirm what the Pentagon already believed. On March 13, he told reporters Khamenei was "likely disfigured." Then, at a press conference on Thursday, he reiterated the claim while delivering a lengthy catalog of Iranian officials eliminated by the U.S.-Israel campaign.
Hegseth laid it out in blunt terms at the Pentagon briefing:
"Their top leadership was systematically eliminated, their previous Iranian supreme leader dead, the supreme national security council secretary dead, the supreme leader office advisor dead, the supreme leader military office chief dead, the defense minister no longer with us, the IRGC commander dead, the armed forces general staff commander dead, the intelligence minister dead, the IRGC navy commander no longer here, the IRGC Intel chief dead."
He continued: "I skipped over a bunch, and I could go on and on and on, to include the new so-called new supreme leader, wounded and disfigured. This new regime was out of options and out of time, so they cut a deal."
That list is worth pausing over. The IRGC commander. The intelligence minister. The defense minister. The armed forces general staff commander. The navy commander. The intel chief. Name after name, office after office, gone. The regime Mojtaba Khamenei inherited is not the regime his father built. It is a hollowed-out shell negotiating from weakness, and Hegseth clearly wanted the world to understand that.
On Thursday, a defiant written statement attributed to Mojtaba Khamenei surfaced. It read, in part: "Iran is not seeking war but will not forfeit its rights and considers all resistance fronts as a unified entity." The language was familiar, the kind of boilerplate Tehran has issued for decades. But the format was not.
Hegseth seized on the medium. He dismissed the statement as "weak" and posed a question that no one in Tehran has answered.
"It was a written statement. Iran has plenty of cameras and plenty of voice recorders. Why a written statement?"
Then he answered his own question: "I think you know why. His father, dead. He's scared, he's injured, he's on the run and he lacks legitimacy. It's a mess for them. Who's in charge? Iran may not even know."
The Washington Times noted that Hegseth said the strike that injured Mojtaba was the same first-day airstrike on his father's home that killed the former supreme leader. The son survived. But surviving and governing are different things, especially when a regime's entire command structure has been gutted around you.
Hegseth had previously dared the new supreme leader to appear on camera, a challenge that remains unanswered.
Even as questions swirl about Khamenei's physical condition, the diplomatic machinery grinds forward. Vice President JD Vance arrived in Islamabad, Pakistan, on April 11, 2026, to lead the U.S. delegation in talks with Iranian officials. He was photographed walking with Pakistan's Chief of Defense Forces Field Marshal Asim Munir, Deputy Prime Minister Mohammad Ishaq Dar, U.S. Embassy Chargé d'affaires Natalie A. Baker, and Interior Minister Mohsin Raza Naqvi.
Reuters reported that Khamenei is communicating with the Iranian delegation in Pakistan, which suggests he retains at least some functional authority. But the gap between remote text communication and the kind of visible, commanding presence a supreme leader needs to project is enormous, particularly in a theocratic system built on the personal authority of one man.
Earlier rounds of engagement between Washington and Tehran have not gone smoothly. Nuclear talks collapsed after Tehran misjudged its leverage, and the regime's negotiating position has only weakened since.
Just The News reported that Hegseth did not elaborate on or provide specific evidence for Khamenei's reported condition beyond the observable fact that the new leader has not appeared publicly since taking power. That absence, combined with the written-only statement, forms the core of the circumstantial case.
Several key questions remain unanswered. Where exactly is Mojtaba Khamenei being treated? What is the full extent of his injuries beyond the reported leg and facial disfigurement? And what does the full text of his written statement say beyond the excerpt that has surfaced?
Independent verification of Khamenei's condition remains thin. The Reuters report relies on three unnamed sources. Hegseth's statements carry the weight of the U.S. War Department but come without publicly presented intelligence. The Iranian regime itself has offered nothing, no denial, no rebuttal, no proof of life beyond a few typed sentences read aloud on state television.
The New York Post reported that the February 28 strikes also killed Khamenei's wife and other family members, adding to the personal devastation the new leader endured in a single night.
President Trump has separately expressed dissatisfaction with the current leadership in Iran, raising further questions about how Washington views the legitimacy of whoever emerges from the wreckage of the old regime.
For decades, Iran's supreme leader sat at the center of a system designed to project invincibility. The title itself, Supreme Leader, was meant to convey absolute, unchallengeable authority rooted in religious legitimacy. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the intelligence apparatus, the missile program, the network of proxy militias stretching from Lebanon to Yemen, all of it radiated outward from one man's office.
That architecture is now in ruins. The man at the top is reportedly disfigured, in hiding, and communicating through written notes. The senior military and intelligence officials who once enforced his father's will are dead. The regime that sent Hegseth's list of casualties to the negotiating table in Islamabad is not negotiating from strength. It is negotiating because, as Hegseth put it, it was "out of options and out of time."
Whether Mojtaba Khamenei eventually appears before a camera or retreats further into the shadows, the message from the February 28 strikes is already clear. The regime that spent four decades promising to outlast America discovered, in a single night, that promises and air defenses are not the same thing.
