Where is Ayatollah Ali Khamenei? Iran's Supreme Leader resurfaces on TV, but questions linger over his whereabouts
On June 26, Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, gave his first address to the nation since the country's 12-day war with Israel ended with a ceasefire that the US President Donald Trump and the Emir of Qatar brokered earlier this week.
Khamenei, in a pre-recorded video message, downplayed reports of damage to the country's nuclear programme by US strikes and declared victory over both Israel and the United States.
'The Islamic republic slapped America in the face,' said Khamenei, 86. He said that the US strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities did not do 'anything important' and that the United States only intervened to save Israel from being 'completely destroyed.'
Khamenei has reportedly been hiding for nearly two weeks after Israel's strike on the country on June 13. Israel also eliminated Iran's senior military leadership and some scientists during the strikes. The Islamic Republic retaliated with missile strikes on Israel.
The US said on Sunday that the country's military 'obliterated' Iran's main nuclear sites using 14 bunker-buster bombs, more than two dozen Tomahawk missiles and over 125 military aircraft. Iran attacked a US air base in neighbouring Qatar.
Iranian officials claimed the attacks left 627 people dead and nearly 5,000 injured. Iran's retaliation targeted parts of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, leaving a trail of damaged buildings and at least 14 people dead, according to reports.
On Tuesday, however, Israel and Iran confirmed a ceasefire, hours after President Trump announced an imminent ceasefire between the two nations on Truth Social.
In his address on Thursday, the ageing Iranian leader Khamenei sat flanked by an Iranian flag and a portrait of his predecessor and the founder of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Khamenei spoke while looking into the camera. But it was unclear exactly when the video was recorded.
According to a Reuters investigation citing five sources with direct knowledge of succession planning, Khamenei has gone into hiding with his family and is being protected by the elite Vali-ye Amr unit of the Revolutionary Guards.
While he is reportedly still being briefed on internal matters, a special three-member committee—appointed by Khamenei himself two years ago—is accelerating efforts to identify his successor, sources told Reuters.
In the event of Khamenei's death, the ruling establishment aims to swiftly announce a new leader to maintain national stability.
As the supreme leader, Khamenei has the last word on all major state matters. As the commander in chief of the armed forces, he would be expected to approve any military decision, including the attack on the American base or the ceasefire deal with Israel.
President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu both suggested during the war that Khamenei was vulnerable and not immune from their strikes.
During an interview with The New York Times on June 25, Mehdi Fazaeli, head of Khamenei's archives office, was asked about the Supreme Leader's well-being. "People are very worried about the Supreme Leader," the host said. Without offering a direct answer, Fazaeli said, "We all should be praying." He added that he received numerous inquiries from officials, and viewers had sent a flood of messages asking the same question. The interview was done before Khamenei's Janauary 26 televised address
Fazaeli claimed that the people who are responsible for protecting the Supreme Leader are doing their job well, adding, "God willing, our people can celebrate victory next to their leader, God willing."
Earlier, officials said that Khamenei had been hiding in a secure underground bunker and was avoiding all electronic communication to prevent assassination attempts.
During the anti-US and anti-Israel protest last week, before the ceasefire, women were seen carrying portraits of Khamenei in their hands. Newspapers in Iran had voiced the concern about Khamenei whereabouts, too. "His days-long absence has made all of us who love him very worried," Mohsen Khalifeh, editor of Khaneman, a daily newspaper.
The three-member panel of the top clerical body in Iran, appointed by Khamenei himself two years ago to identify his replacement, has accelerated its planning, according to news agency Reuters.
According to an earlier in The New York Times, Khamenei has also picked replacements in his chain of military commands in case they are killed in Israeli strikes.
The report, citing three Iranian officials familiar with Khamenei's emergency war plans, said that the Supreme Leader 'mostly speaks with his commanders through a trusted aide now, suspending electronic communications to make it harder to find him'.
'He would be well advised to be cautious, despite the fragile ceasefire that the US President Donald Trump and the Emir of Qatar brokered. Though President Trump reportedly told Israel not to kill Iran's supreme leader, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not rule it out,' wrote Kasra Naji, Special Correspondent, BBC Persian.
Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said on Thursday that his country's forces would have killed Khamenei if it had been possible during the recent 12-day war fought between both nations.
'I estimate that if Khamenei had been in our sights, we would have taken him out," Katz said in an interview with Israel's Kan public television. But Khamenei understood this, went underground to very great depths, and broke off contacts with the commanders who replaced those commanders who were eliminated, so it wasn't realistic in the end," Katz was quoted as saying.
The Islamic republic slapped America in the face.
Sanctions have crippled the Iranian economy, reducing a top oil exporter to a poor and struggling shadow of its former self, Naji said in the BBC report. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Donald Trump had both suggested at various times during the air war that Khamenei's life could be in danger as regime change could be a result of the war that ended with the ceasefire on Tuesday.
"It is difficult to estimate how much longer the Iranian regime can survive under such significant strain, but this looks like the beginning of the end,' Professor Lina Khatib, a visiting scholar at Harvard University was quoted as saying in the BBC report.
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Mossadegh argued that Iran, like any sovereign state, deserved control over its resources. Appearing before the International Court of Justice in 1952, he laid out Iran's case: 'The decision to nationalise the oil industry is the result of the political will of an independent and free nation,' he said. 'For us Iranians, the uneasiness of stopping any kind of action which is seen as interference in our national affairs is more intense than for other nations.' Britain saw the nationalisation as both a strategic and economic threat. It imposed a blockade and led a global oil boycott, while pressuring Washington to intervene. The British adopted a three-track strategy: a failed negotiation effort, a global boycott of Iranian oil and covert efforts to undermine and overthrow Mossadegh, writes Gasiorowski . British intelligence operatives had built ties with 'politicians, businessmen, military officers and clerical leaders' in anticipation of a coup. Initially, the Truman administration resisted intervention. But President Dwight D Eisenhower's election ushered in a more aggressive Cold War posture. 'Under the Truman administration, these boundaries [of acceptable Iranian politics] were drawn rather broadly,' Gasiorowski wrote. 'But when Eisenhower entered office, the more stridently anti-Communist views of his foreign policy advisers led the US to drop its support for Mossadegh and take steps to overthrow him.' Fear of communism's spread, particularly via Iran's Tudeh Party, believed to be the first organised Communist party in the Middle East. 'Although they did not regard Mossadegh as a Communist,' Gasiorowski wrote, 'they believed conditions in Iran would probably continue to deteriorate… strengthening the Tudeh Party and perhaps enabling it to seize power.' While Britain lobbied for a coup, Mossadegh appealed directly to Eisenhower. Eisenhower, in a letter in June 1953, offered sympathy but warned that aid was unlikely so long as Iran withheld oil: 'There is a strong feeling… that it would not be fair to the American taxpayers for the United States Government to extend any considerable amount of economic aid to Iran so long as Iran could have access to funds derived from the sale of its oil.' Mossadegh's response was blunt. He accused Britain of sabotaging Iran's economy through 'propaganda and diplomacy,' and warned that inaction could carry lasting consequences: 'If prompt and effective aid is not given to this country now, any steps that might be taken tomorrow… might well be too late,' he wrote. Weeks later, in August 1953, the CIA and Britain's MI6 launched a covert operation to oust Mossadegh and restore the Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, to power. 'A decision was made to develop and carry out a plan to overthrow Mussadiq and install Zahedi as prime minister,' Gasiorowski wrote. 'The operation was to be led by Kermit Roosevelt, who headed the CIA's Middle East operations division.' The mission, code-named Operation Ajax, used anti-Mossadegh propaganda, bribes, and orchestrated street unrest. After an initial failure and the Shah's brief exile, loyalist military units staged a successful coup on August 19. Mossadegh was arrested, tried, and placed under house arrest until his death in 1967. In 2013, the CIA officially acknowledged its role, releasing declassified documents that described the coup as 'an act of U.S. foreign policy, conceived and approved at the highest levels of government.' In Iran, schoolchildren learn about the 1953 coup in classrooms. State media airs annual retrospectives on Mossadegh's downfall. His name recurs in graffiti, political speeches, and university lectures. In his book The Coup: 1953, the CIA, and the Roots of Modern U.S.-Iranian Relations, the historian Ervand Abrahamian called the operation 'a defining fault line not only for Iranian history but also in the country's relations with both Britain and the United States.' It 'carved in public memory a clear dividing line — 'before' and 'after' — that still shapes the country's political culture,' he wrote. While Cold War defenders portrayed the coup as a check on communism, Abrahamian sees oil and empire as the true motivators. 'The main concern was not so much about communism as about the dangerous repercussions that oil nationalisation could have throughout the world,' he argues. Following the coup, the Shah ruled with increasing autocracy, supported by the US and bolstered by SAVAK (Sazeman-e Ettela'at va Amniyat-e Keshvar), a secret police trained by the CIA. Decades of repression, inequality, and corruption gave way to the 1979 Islamic Revolution, which toppled the monarchy and established the Islamic Republic. 'The strategic considerations that led US policymakers to undertake the 1953 coup helped set in motion a chain of events that later destroyed the Shah's regime and created severe problems for US interests,' wrote Gasiorowski. On November 4, 1979, the US Embassy in Tehran was seized. Fifty-two Americans were held hostage for 444 days. Revolutionaries repeatedly cited 1953 as the origin of their mistrust. Though Washington denied involvement for decades, few Iranians ever doubted the CIA's role in Mossadegh's fall. 'The coup revealed how the United States began almost instinctively to follow in the footsteps of British imperialism,' write David W Lesch and Mark L Haas editors of The Middle East and the United States: History, Politics, and Ideologies . 'Demonstrating a preference for the status quo rather than the forces of change.' Even President Barack Obama, in a 2009 speech in Cairo, acknowledged the long shadow of 1953, noting that the coup had created 'years of mistrust.' No US president has ever issued a formal apology. Dr Omair Anas, director of research at the Centre for Studies of Plural Societies, a non-profit, non-partisan, independent institution dedicated to democratising knowledge, sees the 1953 events as not just a turning point but a template for today's impasse. 'The 1953 coup was staged in the backdrop of the Cold War which resulted in Iran's inclusion into the CENTO alliance along with Pakistan and Turkiye,' he said. He is sharply critical of current regime change rhetoric, describing it as detached from Iran's internal political conditions. 'The most important player is Iran's domestic politics,' he said. 'At this stage, it is not willing and prepared for a regime change.' Anas points out that the government has already absorbed considerable dissent: 'Previous anti-hijab protests have already accommodated many anti-regime voices and sentiments.' But absorbing discontent, he suggests, is not the same as welcoming systemic change. 'Any regime change at this stage would immediately lead the country to chaos and possible civil war, as the new regime won't be able to de-Islamise the state in the near future.' Trump's rhetoric, therefore, landed with particular resonance. While senior officials have attempted to distance the administration from talk of regime change, many in Iran and beyond see a familiar playbook: pressure, provocation, and the threat of externally imposed political outcomes. Dr Anas contends that many of the so-called alternatives to the Islamic Republic are politically inert. 'Anti-regime forces since 1979 have lost much ground and haven't been able to stage a major threat to the revolution,' he said. 'The West is fully aware that the Pahlavi dynasty or the Mujahidin-e-Khalq (MEK) have the least popularity and organisational presence to replace the Khamenei-led regime of Islamic revolution.' As he sees it, the system's survival is not merely a matter of repression but of strategic logic. 'Khamenei can only be replaced by someone like him,' he said. 'The continuity of the Islamic revolution of Iran remains more preferable than any other disruptive replacement.' He also warns that a forced collapse of the current order could have serious regional implications. 'In the case of violent suppression of Islamist forces, the new Iranian state might seek the revival of the Cold War collaboration with Pakistan and Turkiye and a strong push against Russia.' For India, a country that has generally maintained a policy of non-intervention, such a development could be deeply destabilising. 'Any abrupt change would complicate India's West Asia and South Asia strategic calculus,' he said, 'and more fundamentally India's Pakistan strategy.' Dr Anas also sees Western credibility as severely eroded across the region. 'The West has left no credibility whatsoever about human rights, freedom, and democracy after the Israeli-Gaza war,' he said. 'The Middle Eastern public opinion, including that of Kurds, Druze and Afghans, have lost hope in Western promises. They prefer any autocratic regime to West-backed regimes.' India, he said, risks being caught flat-footed if political transitions come suddenly. 'India generally stays away from the normative politics of the Middle East,' he said. 'While this shows India's principled stand on no intervention in internal politics, it also puts India in a weak position once the regime changes, as happened in Syria.' His recommendation? 'India needs to engage more actively with West Asian civil society to have more balanced relations beyond states.' Aishwarya Khosla is a journalist currently serving as Deputy Copy Editor at The Indian Express. Her writings examine the interplay of culture, identity, and politics. She began her career at the Hindustan Times, where she covered books, theatre, culture, and the Punjabi diaspora. Her editorial expertise spans the Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Chandigarh, Punjab and Online desks. She was the recipient of the The Nehru Fellowship in Politics and Elections, where she studied political campaigns, policy research, political strategy and communications for a year. She pens The Indian Express newsletter, Meanwhile, Back Home. Write to her at or You can follow her on Instagram: @ink_and_ideology, and X: @KhoslaAishwarya. ... Read More
