The mystery of “Mehdi Mojtaba Khamenei’s residence” 🖌Hossein Bastani BBC

Last week, the 40th day memorial service for the burial of Ali Khamenei was held in Tehran, Qom, and Mashhad. As with the period of the procession and burial, Mojtaba Khamenei was not present in the series of new ceremonies, and no image or audio of him was released.

This time, unlike during the burial ceremonies, apparently there was no particular expectation in the public sphere for the presence of the Islamic Republic’s third leader: as if his remaining hidden no longer stirred the same sensitivities in the media.

The core claim made by the government’s spokespersons to justify the continuation of this absence is security considerations. The dominant account from these spokespersons is that releasing a video of the new leader would lead to the identification of his location and put his successor’s life at risk. In response to the question of why, at the very least, no sound from Mojtaba Khamenei is released, government media claim that even his voice could reveal the location of where he is being kept.