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That unsettled transfer of power has been compounded by the fact that the new supreme leader has not appeared publicly since his appointment. Reuters reported first that Iranian state television described Mojtaba Khamenei as a “janbaz,” a term used for a wounded veteran, and later cited an Iranian official saying he had been lightly injured but was still operating. Trump, speaking publicly in recent days, has gone further, saying he believed the new leader was alive but “damaged,” and then on Monday said it was unclear whether he was alive at all because “nobody has seen him.”
Against that backdrop, the report about his sexuality landed with unusual political force. CBS News had already reported that U.S. intelligence circulated to Trump and a small inner circle concluded that the late Ali Khamenei had serious misgivings about his son taking power. According to CBS, that analysis found Mojtaba was seen as not very bright and unqualified, and that intelligence gathered by the United States indicated the elder Khamenei knew his son had “issues in his personal life.” CBS did not itself specify those issues in the way the New York Post later did, but it established that American intelligence agencies were already briefing senior U.S. officials on sensitive personal concerns surrounding the new Iranian leader.
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