Posts Tagged ‘Qasem Soleimani’

Motjaba: Dead, Or Just Gay?

Monday, March 16th, 2026

There are multiple rumors floating around about Schrodinger’s Ayatollah, who still hasn’t been seen in public since the initial strikes. The first is that he shuffled off his mortal aba in the airstrike that killed his father Ayatollah Senior and most of Iran’s ruling council.

A second rumor is that he’s alive but badly wounded.

“We know the new so-called not-so-supreme ​leader is wounded and likely disfigured,” Hegseth said in a press briefing on Friday, March 13. “He put out a statement yesterday. A weak one, actually, but there was no voice and there was no video. It was a written statement.”

“Iran has plenty of cameras and plenty of voice recorders,” Hegseth added. “Why a written ​statement? I think you know why. … He’s scared, he’s injured, he’s on the run ‌and ⁠he lacks legitimacy.”

Here’s the obligatory Simon Whistler video to sort through the possibilities.

  • “According to Iranian leaders, he’s alive and well. According to US defense leaders, he’s quote wounded and likefully disfigured. And as regional experts and conflict observers have recently pointed out, he might already be in a coma or even dead.”
  • “One week after he was elevated to rule Iran, the younger Khamenei hasn’t been seen and he hasn’t been heard, raising the distinct possibility that the world and even the people of Iran don’t actually know who’s in charge of Iran’s war effort.”
  • “A longtime adviser and money man who had assisted his father for decades, Motjaba was already rumored not to be on his father’s short list for succession even before the current war with the US and Israel began. Instead, Motjaba was an avatar of some of Iran’s most hardline fighting factions. The internal repression forces known as the Basij, which Motjaba essentially controlled himself, and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, where he’d been close with the deceased General Qasem Soleimani and his successor Hossein Taeb.”
  • “Motjaba was widely understood to be much more extreme than his father, even in his open support of Iranian nuclear weapons, which his father had always publicly denied pursuing. Motjaba had spent years in Iran building a loyal support network, angling to take over despite his father’s wishes, and along with his father, Motjaba’s wife, his mother, and one of his sons were all reported killed in the early waves of US and Israeli bombing.”
  • “Claims from Israeli intelligence as well as anonymous Iranian officials speaking to the global press confirmed that Motjaba is in significantly worse shape than the Iranian regime will acknowledge.”
  • Trump: “I hear he’s not alive.”
  • Back to Whistler: “We can observe a convergence of analysis from the US, Israel, purported Iranian insiders, Iranian opposition sources, and others on the out-abouts. What’s probably true here? While it’s more likely than not that Motjaba Khamenei is alive in some form, most accounts on his whereabouts and status have converged on the idea that he’s in bad shape, isolated, and even if he is alert, he probably isn’t the person calling the shots in Iran on a daily basis.”
  • “If Motjaba isn’t calling the shots, then who is?”
  • “The answer may be a facet of the groups that helped elevate him to the leadership. The Revolutionary Guard, the Basij Paramilitaries, and Iran’s hardline factions.”
  • “It’s not clear that those leaders can exert direct control over the Iranian military. Iran has already shifted into a wartime strategy called mosaic defense. An approach that’s meant to make the country more resilient to decapitation strikes and command and control destruction than it otherwise would be.”
  • “In a mosaic defense, Iran essentially fractures into decentralized individually controlled military units, each given control of certain regions, certain paramilitary allies, and certain warfighting assets. Those units have their broad instructions from the top. But after that, they’re essentially on their own.” A mosaic defense can be effective in running a decentralized insurgency, but is a lot less useful when you’re trying to defend your country against two of the world’s most powerful and technologically sophisticated militaries.
  • “On the one hand, that’s helpful in ensuring that Iran’s military can still function when people like the Supreme Leader are killed. But on the other hand, it’s very difficult to reign those mosaic forces back in once they’ve been given the order to decentralize.”
  • “Already, Iranian leaders have suggested that some of Iran’s actions, like the pervasive strikes on Gulf Energy infrastructure, may have been due to mosaic forces making their own decisions about how to handle the war. With a hardline supreme leader legitimizing the commands and the power of Iran’s revolutionary guard and Basij, there’s a real risk that those forces will only become less responsive to more moderate civil leaders.” Yeah, “moderate civil leaders” isn’t exactly what anyone thinks of when it comes to the Islamic Republic of Iran.
  • Kharg Islands/Marines/Hormuz stuff snipped.

    • I think the Babylon Bee nicely captures the consensus about Mojtaba: “‘It’s Just A Flesh Wound!‘ Says Legless Torso Of Iranian Ayatollah.”

    But beyond dead, coma, and crippled, another possibility about MiniMe Khamenei has recently surfaced, namely that he might be a prancing Nancy Boy.

    President Trump was stunned to learn last week that US intelligence indicates new Iranian Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei may be gay — and that his father, the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, feared his suitability to rule the Islamic Republic for that reason, The Post can reveal.

    Trump couldn’t contain his surprise and laughed aloud when he was briefed on the intel, according to sources.

    Others in the room also found it “hilarious” and joined the president’s reaction, while one senior intelligence official “has not stopped laughing about it for days,” said one person familiar with the briefing.

    The shocking claim was described to The Post by two intelligence community officials and a third person close to the White House.

    Of course, all this could merely be scurrilous rumor or psychological warfare aimed at the regime. The idea that Mojtaba enjoys having burly men pound his poop-chute would obviously radically reduce his support among the notoriously anti-gay power circles of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The Supreme Leader doing the same things that get others hung from cranes might make regime figures less likely to follow his orders, especially if they start suspecting they’re being issued from inside a strapless lavender evening gown.

    There is another possibility: Like Liberace and Oscar Wilde, Mojtaba Khamenei could be both gay and dead…

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    Posted in Foreign Policy, Jihad, Military | 14 Comments »

    Is Islamic Iran Cracking?

    Thursday, January 8th, 2026

    Yesterday I cautioned that the loss of two relatively minor Kurdish cities to anti-regime forces wasn’t a sign that the fall of the regime was imminent. However, today things seem to be getting much spicier, with reports that Mashhad, Iran’s second largest city, was under protestor control.

  • “Protests in Iran’s second largest city, Mashad, have surpassed 1 million participants. Unable to withstand the pressure from the protesters, security forces were forced to leave the city.”
  • “Footage circulating on social media shows demonstrators, mostly young people, chanting slogans against the ruling regime. Protesters say the clerical regime will soon be overthrown and that Reza Pahlavi will return to power.” While he would be an unquestionable improvement over the Mullahs, restoring the Pahlavi monarchy is not a course I would have expected or advised, but there seems to be a surprising amount of sentiment for it online. It’s impossible to say, at this remove, whether this sentiment is widespread among Iranian protestors.
  • “In cities, portraits of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei as well as statues of Qasem Soleimani are being burned.”
  • Random protester: “Reza Pahlavi, come to Iran! Bibi Netanyahu, come to Iran!”
  • “A video released in social media shows a standoff between protesters and riot police in Iran’s northeastern Mashhad province as anti-government demonstrations have entered the 12th day. In the video, security units are seen pulling back in the face of large and angry crowds.”
  • “Government forces were also forced to retreat in Borazjan, Bushehr province in southern Iran.”
  • In other places, security forces are still shooting protestors.

    • Livemap snapshot? Sure, why not?

    Hard to tell whether those areas not showing protests are free of them, or whether we just lack information. One reason for that lack? The regime has shut down the Internet across the nation.

    Huge crowds of protesters have been marching through Iran’s capital and other cities, videos show, in what is said to be the largest show of force by opponents of the clerical establishment in years.

    The peaceful demonstrations in Tehran and the second city of Mashhad on Thursday evening, which were not dispersed by security forces, can be seen in footage verified by BBC Persian.

    Later, a monitoring group reported a nationwide internet blackout.

    Protesters can be heard in the footage calling for the overthrow of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the return of Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of the late former shah, who had urged his supporters to take to the streets.

    It was the 12th consecutive day of unrest that has been sparked by anger over the collapse of the Iranian currency and has spread to more than 100 cities and towns across all 31 of Iran’s provinces, according to human rights groups.

    The US-based Human Rights Activist News Agency (HRANA) has said that at least 34 protesters and eight security personnel have been killed, and that 2,270 other protesters arrested.

    Norway-based monitor Iran Human Rights (IHR) has said at least 45 protesters, including eight children, have been killed by security forces.

    BBC Persian has confirmed the deaths and identities of 22 people, while Iranian authorities have reported the deaths of six security personnel.

    On Thursday evening, videos posted on social media and verified by BBC Persian showed a large crowd of protesters moving along a major road in Mashhad, in the country’s north-east.

    Chants of “Long live the shah” and “This is the final battle! Pahlavi will return” can be heard. And at one point, several men are seen climbing on an overpass and removing what appears to be surveillance cameras attached to it.

    Another video showed a large crowd of protesters walking along a major road in eastern Tehran, while in the north of the city a small gathering was heard chanting “Long live the shah” and “Death to the dictator” – a reference to Khamenei.

    Protesters were also filmed chanting “Long live the shah” at a main square in the northern city of Babol.

    It came not long after Reza Pahlavi, whose father was overthrown by the 1979 Islamic revolution and lives in Washington DC, had called on Iranians to “take to the streets and, as a united front, shout your demands”.

    Are the mullahs ready to topple? I remain unconvinced, but it does appear more likely than yesterday.

    And we’re creeping closer and closer to President Trump and allies thinking it’s time to give them a nudge.

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    Posted in Foreign Policy, Jihad | 7 Comments »