US President
Donald Trump was briefed last week by US intelligence that Iran’s new Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, may be gay, and that's the reason his father, the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, feared his suitability to rule the Islamic Republic, according to New York Post, citing sources.
When Trump was briefed, he couldn't control his laughter and laughed aloud, according to sources.
Others in the room also found it “hilarious” and joined the president’s reaction, while one senior intelligence official “has not stopped laughing about it for days,” said one person familiar with the briefing.
The claim was described by two intelligence community officials and a third person close to the White House. All three sources said US spy agencies viewed the allegation as credible, rather than false information intended to undermine Khamenei, 56, who was selected to replace his dead father as supreme leader on March 8.
Two of the sources said the intelligence indicated that Mojtaba, who earned the nickname “the power behind the robes” while serving as his ageing father’s gatekeeper, had a long-term sexual relationship with his childhood tutor. The third source said the intelligence indicated the affair was with a person who formerly worked for the Khamenei family.
Mojtaba, who is believed to have been wounded in the same Feb. 28 airstrike that killed his father and other members of his family, made “aggressive” sexual overtures to men caring for him, possibly while under the influence of heavy medication, one of the sources said.
US spy agencies did not have photographic evidence of Mojtaba Khamenei’s alleged sexual attraction to men, but the sources insisted the tip was solid, with one saying it was “derived from one of the most protected sources that the government has.”
“The fact that this was elevated to the highest of high levels shows you there’s some confidence in this,” added a second source.
The sources said Mojtaba’s purported sexual orientation had been whispered about inside Iran since at least the May 2024 helicopter crash that killed then-President Ebrahim Raisi, Ali Khamenei’s presumed favourite to be the next supreme leader.
Within the US govt, “it’s been a pretty closely held piece of information,” one insider said.
Trump previously dismissed Mojtaba Khamenei as a “lightweight” and an “unacceptable” choice to run Iran. The new supreme leader was widely considered to be someone who would not bend to US demands to abandon the nuclear and ballistic missile programmes that prompted Operation Epic Fury.
Some elements of Mojtaba Khamenei’s sex life were reported before and were cited as potentially lending credence to the allegation. A classified US diplomatic cable from 2008, published by WikiLeaks, described Mojtaba being treated in the UK for impotence, though that report did not identify what may have caused the condition.
The State Department file said Mojtaba married “relatively late in life” around age 30, “reportedly due to an impotency problem treated and eventually resolved during three extended visits to the UK, at Wellington and Cromwell Hospitals, London.”
“Mojtaba was expected by his family to produce children quickly, but needed a fourth visit to the UK for medical treatment; after a stay of two months, his wife became pregnant,” the leaked file said.
Mojtaba’s wife, Zahra, and teenage son, Mohammad Bagher, reportedly died in the airstrike that killed his father. The new supreme leader has another son and a daughter.
The allegation of homosexuality was alluded to in a CBS News report on Sunday that said the elder Khamanei, who ruled Iran since 1989, preferred a different successor in part because of unspecified “issues” in Mojtaba’s “personal life.”
“His father and others suspected he was gay and that was something that people were spreading to try to stop his ascension,” one of the sources explained.
Homosexual conduct is illegal in Iran, though the govt allows surgical sex change operations, which some gay men reportedly were pressured into undergoing to avoid criminal penalties. Sodomy is a capital offence in the nation of 93 million people, with some gay Iranians infamously hanged from construction cranes as a warning to others.
“In Iran, we don’t have homosexuals,” former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who is believed to be an ally of the younger Khamenei, claimed in 2007.
One of the sources said that although it is generally frowned upon to out people against their will, there was a case of hypocrisy to justify doing so against Mojtaba.
“If there was ever a time where it was OK to out somebody, it would be when it’s a leader of a repressive Islamic theocracy that hangs gay people by cranes,” this person said.
Mojtaba Khamenei’s current whereabouts and the status of his recovery from the Feb. 28 airstrikes remained unclear, the sources said.