Iranian judiciary says chief held rare meeting with supreme leader

Iran’s judiciary says that its chief held a rare meeting with the country’s supreme leader Mojtaba Khamenei, who has yet to appear in public since being appointed.

Mojtaba was chosen in March to succeed his father and longtime ruler Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed in US-Israeli strikes in central Tehran alongside senior military commanders at the start of the Middle East war, and was said to have been injured in the same attack.

Judiciary chief Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei and the supreme leader discussed issues including “securing public rights, and effectively combating corruption and its bottlenecks,” the judiciary’s Mizan Online website reports.

They held talks on “pursuing the recovery of rights and compensation for material and moral damages arising from the crimes of American-Zionist criminals,” it says.

The younger Khamenei has only communicated through written messages since his appointment, some of them published in handwriting attributed to him.

No video message from him has been released, and the time and location of his meeting with Ejei aren’t disclosed, as has been the case with previously reported meetings.

Earlier this week, Iran’s chief negotiator Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf also reportedly met with the supreme leader to discuss “the latest developments” in the war.

President Masoud Pezeshkian was reported to have met Mojtaba Khamenei in May, in what was among the first publicly reported meetings with the new leader.

Ali Abdollahi, then head of the Khatam al-Anbiya command centre overseeing Iran’s military operations, also met him later.

Abdollahi was subsequently appointed chief of the staff of the Iranian armed forces while retaining his previous position.