Iran’s supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, will not reappear in public until the situation with the US and Israel normalizes, an official source informed the Russian agency TASS this Saturday.

“For security reasons, His Excellency will not reappear in public soon. The Government awaits the normalization of the situation. Then he will reappear,” said the source.

He added to TASS that Khamenei “does not appear in public due to the war,” during which his father and ayatollah, Ali Khamenei, was assassinated on February 28.

BREAKING: Iran’s supreme leader Mojtaba Khamenei will not appear publicly until the war with the United States ends, an Iranian official says. pic.twitter.com/75z1xLfcSZ

— Al Arabiya English (@AlArabiya_Eng) July 18, 2026

For this reason, Mojtaba did not even attend his father’s public funerals two weeks ago, ceremonies in which the other three children of the deceased leader did participate.

The source anticipated that “the first meeting” of the supreme leader of the Islamic republic could be with the head of the Kremlin, Vladimir Putin, whom the source described as a “close friend” of Tehran.

Putin condemned at the time the assassination of Khamenei, whom he considered a close ally of Russia, a country that this week accused Washington of violating the memorandum signed in June with Iran by resuming bombings against the territory of the Islamic republic.

“The most important thing is that this will not lead to a settlement and closes the door that the aforementioned memorandum seemed to open slightly,” said Sergei Lavrov, Russian Foreign Minister.

This verbal and military escalation underscores the expansion of the conflict beyond bilateral borders, putting Persian Gulf nations that allow the deployment of Washington-led coalition troops on alert. Meanwhile, Tehran maintains that its objectives seek to deter what it calls a “dishonorable approach” by the Pentagon.

From teleSUR English via This RSS Feed.