US President Donald Trump has said that the CIA told him that Iran’s newly appointed supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, may be gay, quipping to Fox News that it puts the cleric “off to a bad start.”
The claim comes amid failed US-Israeli regime change efforts in Iran, a country where homosexual conduct is illegal under Islamic Law.
Trump had previously made other disparaging comments regarding Mojtaba Khamenei, dismissing him as a “lightweight” and an “unacceptable” leader. However, critics have noted that such claims have only consolidated Iranian public opinion against Washington.
The president’s latest insult comes as the US and Israel continue their unprovoked attacks against Iran which began with the assassination of Mojtaba’s father, former Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, late last month. US and Israeli officials have repeatedly called for regime change in Tehran, but the government has not collapsed.
According to a New York Times report on Sunday, the Trump administration had embraced an Israeli plan to foment a coup in Iran within days of the start of the war. Despite skepticism from US intelligence agencies, Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly bet on the “optimistic outlook” that decapitating Iran’s leadership would spark a popular uprising.
The plan failed, and Mojtaba Khamenei was quickly appointed as the new supreme leader. However, he has remained out of public sight since being wounded in the strike that killed his father.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has dismissed the notion that the killing of top officials could bring down the government. “The Islamic Republic of Iran has a strong political structure with established political, economic, and social institutions,” he told Al Jazeera last week. “The presence or absence of a single individual does not affect this structure.”
Former Mossad official Rami Igra also told RT that the US‑Israeli strategy of decapitating Iran’s leadership in hopes of sparking a revolution was a “miscalculation,” noting that a revolution requires a popular movement, local leadership and armed control – none of which exist in Iran.
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