Iranian officials said the new supreme leader was “lightly injured” but safe, after his absence fueled speculation that he was wounded in US and Israeli strikes.
Mojtaba Khamenei has not been seen since he was selected last week to succeed his father, the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
To smooth Mojtaba’s succession, loyalists are trying to “deify” Khamenei, the Financial Times reported, by comparing his killing to that of the seventh-century Imam Hussein, whose martyrdom is a foundation story of Shia Islam; one relative called the former ayatollah “the master of martyrs.”
While many Iranians, hoping for reform in the Islamic republic, celebrated Khamenei’s death, the destruction wrought by the ongoing conflict is now kindling a “sense of nationalism,” a Tehran-based sociologist said.