On Monday, the New York Post published an explosive report on Iran’s new Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, claiming that he may be gay. The Post cited three sources – two US intelligence officers and one White House insider – to report that President Donald Trump was briefed on the matter this week. The 79-year-old reportedly “laughed aloud” after the briefing.
The NYP report comes in the backdrop of CBS News report on Sunday, which claimed that the Late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was against the selection of Mojtaba Khamenei as the next Supreme Leader over “issues” in his “personal life.” The report, however, did not specify what those issues might be.
The New York Post claims that the three sources told them that the intelligence on Mojtaba Khamenei being gay is “viewed as credible by US spy agencies.” But the Post noted that US intelligence agencies do not have any photographic evidence of the same and the information is being “closely held” by the US government.
Under Iran Islamic penal code, same-sex sexual acts can be punished with flogging, imprisonment, or even the death penalty. However, gender-affirming surgery is legal and permitted in Iran, following a religious ruling by Ruhollah Khomeini in the 1980s.
Mojtaba Khamenei ‘Treated For Impotency’
Notably, speculation about Mojtaba’s personal life has been rife since the late 2000s. A WikiLeaks report on a US State Department cable from 2008 showed that Alireza Nourizadeh, a US-based Iranian expatriate scholar, told US intelligence agencies that Mojtaba, then 39, was being treated for “impotency” in London. But no other credible report on the same exists.
The file stated that Mojtaba married “relatively late in life, reportedly due to an impotency problem treated and eventually resolved during three extended visits to the UK, at Wellington and Cromwell Hospitals, London. Mojtaba was expected by his family to produce children quickly, but needed a fourth visit to the UK for medical treatment; after a stay of two months, his wife became pregnant.
“Back in Iran, a healthy boy (now about one year old) was born, named Ali for his paternal grandfather.”
Some reports claim that Mojtaba Khamenei’s wife Zahra, and their son, Mohammad Bagher, were killed in the same airstrike that killed Ali Khamenei.
What Sources Told The Post
The three sources cited by the New York Post report provided alleged lurid details of Mojtaba Khamanei’s personal life. The report claimed that he “had a long-term sexual relationship with his childhood tutor” and ” made “aggressive sexual overtures to men caring for him, possibly while under the influence of heavy medication.”
One of the sources cited in the report claimed that “Ayatollah Khamanei and others suspected he was gay and that was something that people were spreading to try to stop his ascension.”
The report noted that there is no photographic or other evidence of the same, and one of the sources only insisted that “the fact that this was elevated to the highest of high levels shows you there’s some confidence in this.”
