U.S. intelligence shows that Iran’s supreme leader is effectively holed up in an undisclosed location with little access to the outside world and is only reached by a labyrinth of couriers, according to U.S. officials with knowledge of the matter.
The Iranian officials authorized to work with the Trump administration have been having a difficult time communicating inside of their own government system — and it’s a central reason why the details of a potential deal with Iran and past agreements have been slow to emerge.
When the U.S. sends proposed details, the difficulty in reaching the supreme leader means there can be a long delay before the U.S. receives a response, two of the officials said.
A White House spokesperson declined to comment on intelligence on the supreme leader’s whereabouts or Iranian communication methods.
A senior administration official said Sunday the supreme leader had agreed to the contours of the current draft agreement, and President Trump posted on Truth Social that he anticipated final word in the next few days.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, who was injured in U.S. and Israeli strikes in Operation Epic Fury, is taking extreme measures to avoid the strikes similar to the ones that killed his father, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who ruled Iran from 1989 until Feb. 28. Mojtaba Khamenei has not been officially seen or heard in public since before the start of the war.
U.S. and Israeli intelligence obtained from inside the Iranian government has made it possible to locate and eliminate much of the Iranian senior leadership during the war, one of the officials said.
At this point, most Iranian leaders don’t see daylight, spending weeks inside highly fortified bunkers and avoiding speaking to each other unless absolutely necessary, the sources said.
“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.
The most cautious measures are being taken by the supreme leader.
By design, even officials at the highest levels of the Iranian government don’t know where he is and have no way to contact him directly.
Instead, messages are passed through a network of couriers created to obscure the supreme leader’s location.
“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 said.
The supreme leader has communicated in broad terms to his subordinates, giving them direction on what issues they can negotiate on and which issues shouldn’t be discussed.
