Iran’s new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, was injured in the 28 February attack that killed six of his family members, including his father, Tehran’s ambassador to Cyprus has confirmed.
In an interview conducted at his embassy compound in Nicosia, Alireza Salarian elaborated on the circumstances in which Khamenei, 56, was injured, saying he was lucky to survive the strike, which levelled the late ayatollah’s residence.
“He was also there and he was injured in that bombardment but I haven’t seen that reflected in the foreign news,” he told the Guardian. “I have heard that he was injured in his legs and hand and arm … I think he is in the hospital because he is injured.”
Explaining why the cleric had not appeared in public or made any statements since he succeeded his father on Sunday, he added: “I don’t think he is comfortable [in any condition] to give a speech.”
The attack occurred on the opening day of US-led airstrikes against Iran, when the sprawling presidential complex in the heart of Tehran was targeted. It was the 10th day of the holy month of Ramadan, said the ambassador, and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was at his residence with several members of his family, including Mojtaba’s wife, Zahra, and his teenage son, Mohammad Bagher, who were also killed in the attack.
Iranian media reports suggested that Ali Khamenei’s wife, Mansour, died three days after the aerial strike.
“The [late] supreme leader was killed with his wife, with his daughter, with his son-in-law and with his daughter’s 14-month-old baby,” said Salarian, who was in Iran when the US-led offensive began. “They were inside their house near the presidential office. Top commanders were also killed as they were also invited. The supreme leader had four sons and two daughters and actually he lived in the same place where he worked.”
On Wednesday Yousef Pezeshkian, a top government adviser and the son of Iran’s president, had said Mojtaba Khamenei was wounded but stopped short of explaining how. In a post on his Telegram channel, he wrote: “I heard news that Mr Mojtaba Khamenei had been injured. I have asked some friends who had connections. They told me that, thank God, he is safe and sound.” An Iranian official on Wednesday told Reuters that Khamenei was “lightly injured” but still continuing to operate.
Earlier this week Iranian state TV described the regime’s new leader as a “wounded veteran of the Ramadan war” but did not specify his injuries.
The US president, Donald Trump, called Mojtaba Khamenei’s election by an 88-member committee of clerics “an unacceptable choice”, adding: “He is not going to last long.”
Israel has warned it will not hesitate to assassinate the Shia cleric, thought to be as hardline as his father, who had held the post for 37 years after the Islamic revolution.
Salarian told the Guardian the late ayatollah had not wanted his son to replace him. “High-ranking clergymen did ask him but the late supreme leader said ‘no’ because he didn’t want a dynastic system. He was elected. [After the attack] top-ranking clergymen said: ‘This is your job; you have to obey.’”
Western intelligence services believe the new leader is being deliberately kept out of the public eye for fear of an assassination attempt. “I don’t know if he [the new leader] is worried or not, but we know that the US, and especially Israel, will target him,” the ambassador said.
Estimating that the death toll from the war in Iran had reached 1,400 by Tuesday, Salarian said Tehran, a city of 14 million, had been emptied of “around half of its population”, with people fleeing to other cities as a result of the bombardment.
The attacks had not only taken the country’s political and diplomatic elite by surprise – despite the military buildup in the region – but proved, he said, that unlike his predecessors, Trump did not believe in the rule of law or abide by it.
“Nobody believed, expected or predicted the attacks when we had finished a third round of negotiations in Geneva. Trump is a phenomenon. He does not believe in rule of law internationally or even internally in his own country,” said the envoy, while praising the administrations of Joe Biden and Barack Obama.
Denying that Iran had any intention of developing a nuclear bomb, he said: “The late supreme leader himself announced that we are not going to have nuclear weapons based on Iran’s religious code under which using nuclear weapons is forbidden.”
Iran, he said, had friendly relations with Cyprus despite the “problem” posed by British bases on the eastern Mediterranean island. During the 12-day war in June last year the installations had provided logistical support to Israeli and US forces targeting military and nuclear facilities in the Islamic republic, he claimed.
But this time, he said, there was no evidence “these two military bases support, or are involved in, this attack”.
RAF Akrotiri was struck by an explosive-packed Iranian-made Shahed drone just after midnight on 28 February, with similar devices being used in attacks intercepted by British fighter jets the next day.
Blaming the strikes on militia groups in Lebanon that had neither coordinated with Iran nor were within “our control”, he instead suggested without giving any evidence that Israel could have “staged” the attack.
“If the bases are used in Cyprus [against us] we have the right to respond. Everybody knows that … our relevant authorities have said that. Iran was not behind these drone attacks and it has announced that. It is possible that [the attacks] came from Israel with the aim of involving other countries in this war.”
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