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  6.  » Iran’s new leader ‘flown to Moscow’ for surgery after being ‘seriously injured’

Zharha Khaliq – The Daily Mirror March 15, 2026

Iran’s new supreme leader has reportedly flown to Moscow for leg surgery which was “personally offered by Putin” after he was injured in airstrikes.

Mojtaba Khamenei is said to have been injured in the initial US-Israeli strikes that targeted Tehran on February 28. It comes after Donald Trump said the new leader could be dead, having not been seen since his appointment. “I don’t know if he’s even alive. So far, nobody’s been able to show him,” Trump told NBC. “I’m hearing he’s not alive, and if he is, he should do something very smart for his country, and that’s surrender.”

Khamenei has now reportedly been flown out of Iran and underwent a “successful” operation at one of Putin’s presidential palaces, according to Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Jarida.

The outlet reports that the top-secret surgery saw Khamenei flown to Moscow on a Russian military aircraft. While the report has not yet been confirmed, Al-Jarida said it had received information from a “high-ranking source close to the new Iranian Supreme Leader”.

Due to the severity of his injuries, Khamenei was reportedly treated at a specialist hospital, made possible by Putin, who is said to have proposed treating him in a call on Thursday. The leader is believed to have been transferred to Russia that same evening.

Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araghchi has meanwhile claimed Khamenei is “in full health and is fully managing the situation.”

There has been much speculation over the leader’s health in recent days. An Israeli assessment indicated he was wounded in the war’s opening salvo, which killed other members of his family including his father Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

On Friday, US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth said Mojtaba Khamenei was “wounded and likely disfigured”. He added: “Iran has plenty of cameras and plenty of voice recorders. Why a written statement? I think you know why. His father: dead; he’s scared, he’s injured, he’s on the run, and he lacks legitimacy.”

After his father’s death, Mojtaba Khamenei released a statement through Iran’s state television news. He said he would avenge not just the killings of his father and other leaders by the US and Israel – but that of every Iranian who has died in this war.

“I assure everyone that we will not refrain from avenging the blood of your martyrs,” he said. “The retaliation we have in mind is not limited only to the martyrdom of the great leader of the Revolution; rather, every member of the nation who is martyred by the enemy constitutes a separate case in the file of revenge.”

He also promised to keep up attacks on Gulf Arab countries and use the effective closure of the strategic Strait of Hormuz as leverage against the US and Israel.

 

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