Iran’s new Supreme Leader has reportedly undergone leg surgery in Moscow after Vladimir Putin offered to help, according to reports.
Multiple differing accounts have circulated this week about Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei’s condition after he was allegedly injured in the first wave of airstrikes last month.
The new leader released a written statement earlier this week, but has not been seen since his appointment, after replacing his father Ali Khamenei who was killed in the conflict.
According to Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Jarida, the new leader was flown out of Iran on a private Russian military aircraft to undergo a secret operation in Moscow.
The publication alleges the surgery, which took place inside one of Putin’s palaces, was “successful.”
Al-Jarida said its information came from a “high-ranking source close to the new Iranian Supreme Leader.”
Donald Trump said on Saturday he wasn’t sure if Mr Khamenei was alive.
US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth also remarked in the week that the Iran leader had been left “disfigured” following reports which emerged claiming he was “in a coma and had lost a leg.”
But amid the ongoing speculation, Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araghchi claimed Mr Khamenei is “in full health and is fully managing the situation.”
Speaking to American site MS Now on Saturday, he said: “There is no problem with the new Supreme Leader. He sent his message and he will perform his duties.
“He is performing his duties, duties according to the constitution and he will continue to do that.
“I think by now it should have been clear and it should have been known for everybody that our system is very well rooted in the society.”
A statement released on behalf of the new leader on Thursday via Iran’s state TV news, where he vowed to “avenge the blood of Iranians.”
The statement continued by insisting that Iran would not refrain from avenging the “blood of its martyrs”, after a US strike near a school killed 168 people, including 110 children.
“We are not an enemy of the countries around us, and we are only targeting the bases of those Americans,” the statement continued.
