Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Tuesday he believes Mojtaba Khamenei is alive and “increasingly engaging at some level” in decision-making, even though he hasn’t appeared in public.
Iran’s regime appointed him as supreme leader after his father, Ali Khamenei, was killed in the initial U.S.-Israeli strikes on Feb. 28.
Mr. Rubio said Mojtaba Khamenei was likely badly injured in the same strikes that killed his father. However, the secretary said he thinks the son survived.
“We haven’t seen him publicly,” Mr. Rubio told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “I would imagine, given what’s happened to multiple leaders in that system, being very public is probably not something that’s recommended for them internally.”
Mr. Rubio said the supreme leader is probably deeply involved in decision-making as Iran tries to negotiate an end to the war.
He said it’s hard for Americans to understand the supreme leader’s role, since it’s theological with no direct analogy in the U.S. system.
Iran’s leader is surrounded by a council that involves the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and other top figures.
Other officials, including Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, are key negotiators who appear in the media — a stratified system that makes it hard to negotiate, according to the secretary.
“What Araghchi and Ghalibaf take from us, they then have to run back to this council,” Mr. Rubio said.
President Trump has said it’s difficult to tell whom the U.S. is negotiating with, given the fractured power system in Iran and deaths of leaders in initial strikes.
“Nobody knows who is in charge, including them,” the president said in April.
