Shocking reports coming in from within the US intelligence circle have revealed that the newly appointed Supreme Leader in Iran, Mojtaba Khamenei, may be facing a legitimacy crisis. According to reports coming in from The New York Post, President Trump has been briefed by US intelligence officials about the alleged gay orientation of the Islamic Republic’s leader. The news seems to have caused much mirth in the Oval Office.
High-level briefing: Credible sources and childhood connections
According to US intelligence officials and a source within the Oval Office, the information is based on “one of the US government’s most protected sources.” The source claims that the Islamic Republic’s leader is gay and that he had a long-term gay relationship with his male childhood tutor.
According to the source, while the Supreme Leader was recuperating in an Iranian clinic after the recent airstrikes on February 28, he allegedly “made aggressive approaches” towards his male medical staff while under the influence of heavy medication. Although Western sources normally do not “out” gay people in public life, officials cited the “hypocrisy” of the Islamic Republic as the reason for the leak.
The London connection: A history of personal ‘issues’
To add further weight to the allegations against the Islamic Republic’s leader, sources have cited a State Department cable sent in 2008. The cable, which was leaked by WikiLeaks in 2010, claimed that Mojtaba Khamenei was flown to the Cromwell Hospital in London and the Wellington Hospital in London several times for his severe impotence problems.
Records indicate that he married late in life at the age of 30, and the Khamenei family is said to have been worried about his failure to sire an heir. It is only after the fourth series of medical treatments in the UK that his children were born, giving credence to rumors about his personal life.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s succession worries
According to the leaked information, the late Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, knew about his son’s orientation and realized that his son was “unsuitable” to rule an Islamic theocracy due to his gay orientation.
This piece of information is in tandem with recent CBS News reports that indicated that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei scouted for a successor before finally endorsing his son. The “unspecified personal issues” that caused the delay in endorsing his son as his successor are now seen in the context of this latest intelligence leak.
The lethal hypocrisy of the Islamic republic
The latest information poses a serious threat to the power of the Supreme Leader in an Islamic Republic where sodomy is punishable by death. Gay men are notoriously hanged from cranes in the Islamic Republic as a form of execution for sodomy.
The hypocrisy in the regime’s execution of gay men is seen in the latest information as a “kill shot” for the reputation of the Supreme Leader. In 2007, the then-president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad famously told Columbia University that “In Iran, we don’t have homosexuals like in your country.”
A leadership in crisis
Mojtaba Khamenei’s hold on power is already precarious. Now believed to be receiving treatment in a Russian hospital following the airstrikes in February and reportedly relying on artificial imagery to create the illusion of public engagement, this information could drain the remaining support for the regime. Should the hardline clerics in Qom and the IRGC officers confirm the veracity of the claims, the religious and constitutional legitimacy of Mojtaba will disappear.
