‘Like a sitcom’: Iranian regime’s bunkers, elaborate courier network said delaying deal

Iranian Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei is hiding in a secret location, and communicates via an elaborate network of messengers, CBS News reported late Sunday, citing American officials familiar with US intelligence.

The precautionary measures, meant to keep Israel from assassinating Khamenei, are causing delays in US-Iran talks to end the war, the report said. It added that even senior Iranian officials don’t know Khamenei’s location and cannot contact him directly.

“This is why you see people saying things like, ‘The supreme leader has agreed to the framework,’ or ‘We’re waiting to hear back on the final deal points.’ Every piece of information he receives is dated and there’s a lot of latency to his responses,” one official told the network.

Still, the supreme leader has managed to communicate, in broad strokes, what the Iranian negotiating team is authorized to discuss. He’s done so by way of a complicated system of couriers designed to keep his location obscured, the report said.

He is not the only senior Iranian official who has gone underground, according to the CBS report. The report said the leaders spend weeks in bunkers and try to avoid communicating with each other.

“Watching them try to figure out how to talk to each other is almost like watching a sitcom. They are completely exasperated,” one official said.

Khamenei’s father and predecessor, Ali Khamenei, was killed on February 28, the first day of the US-Israeli war with Iran.

Mojtaba, who was also injured in the US-Israeli strikes, was appointed to succeed his father in March. A report in early April, citing US-Israeli intelligence, said that Khamenei was unconscious and being treated for a “severe” medical issue in the city of Qom.

Though US and Israeli officials were initially agnostic about his survival, they have since indicated that they believe him to be wounded but alive.

Reported to have suffered severe facial and leg injuries, the younger Khamenei has not been publicly seen or heard since the war’s start, though he has purportedly issued written statements.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said in early May that he had met with Khamenei, though he did not say when or where.

An AFP report around the same time said the supreme leader remained mentally sharp and was taking part in meetings with senior officials via audio conferencing.

Other sources claimed that the younger Khamenei was not exercising the same centralized authority as his father, with power instead shifting to senior commanders in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and out of the office of the supreme leader, who remained under close medical care.

Earlier this month, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he believed Mojtaba was “trying to exert his authority,” but the premier assessed this authority to be less than that wielded by Ali Khamenei prior to his death.