Who Is Giving Orders in Tehran? Israel Must Ask

THE HEIR NO ONE OBEYS

Mojtaba Khamenei has not been verifiably seen since the strike. US intelligence chief Tulsi Gabbard testified he was severely wounded; CNN reported a broken foot and facial injuries. Since his appointment, Iran has produced no verifiable proof of life: written statements read by news anchors, archive footage passed off as new, and photographs that BBC Verify exposed as AI-manipulated. If he were functioning, the regime would show him. The blackout itself is the primary signal.

Authoritarian succession is always opaque, yet concealment has hard temporal limits.

The television era: actual deaths of state leaders were hidden for two to three days at most (Brezhnev in 1982, Kim Il-sung in 1994). Regimes could mask terminal illness for months — Andropov’s half-year “cold” in 1983-84, Chernenko’s ghostly final appearances — but once death occurred, the........

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