Iran airs rare clip of supreme leader — but here’s why it does nothing to dispel dire health rumors

Iran released a rare video Sunday of its supreme leader appearing in prime condition amid his long absence from the public eye and swirling reports of deteriorating health.

The country’s semi-official Mehr News Agency flaunted video of Mojtaba Khamenei, 56, sitting in a circle and speaking with a group of men, with no context of when or where the scene took place.

Khamenei was notably free of any of the horrific injuries he was believed to have suffered in the initial airstrikes of the war that killed his father, suggesting the video was taken before the conflict began.

The supreme leader, who has yet to be seen in public in nearly half a year, suffered severe leg and facial injuries in the Feb. 28 strike on his father’s compound, according to Washington and Tehran.

Khamenei’s face was disfigured in the strike and has been kept out of the public eye, sources close to the supreme leader told Reuters, with recent reports suggesting the supreme leader was suffering health complications from his injuries.

Iranian officials have repeatedly denied that Khamenei’s health is deteriorating and that he merely serves as a puppet for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps that backs his rule.

Qasem Qoraishi, deputy of Iran’s Basij Organization, suggested the Mehr footage was merely the beginning of a new wave of Khamenei footage to reinforce that the supreme leader is well and making active decisions in the government.

Footage and other documentation of Khamenei actively going out in public on the streets of Tehran, along with attending meetings with his armed forces, will supposedly be released in the future, Qoraishi said Sunday.

The videos will “once ⁠again ​bring disgrace upon the enemies and detractors ​of the Iranian people,” he said.  

One of the videos will be of the mysterious supposed July meeting between Khamenei and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, who suggested last week that he might not have met the supreme leader at all. 

Pezeshkian said he allegedly spoke with Khamenei after agents shoved him into the back seat of a dark car with blacked-out windows in a secret location in Tehran.

The president noted that he could not actually see the man he spoke with for only a few minutes, making it unclear whether the person he met with was really Khamenei.

Iran previously released AI-produced images of Khamenei after the initial rumors that he had been killed in the Feb. 28 airstrike.

With Post wires