President Donald Trump was reportedly briefed last week that U.S. intelligence believes Iran’s new Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, may be gay, according to The New York Post.
Trump and others in the room found it “hilarious” and laughed that the Supreme Leader of an Islamic extremist state may be homosexual, according to a source close to the White House.
In Iran, homosexuality is illegal, and allegations can mean the death penalty. Gay Iranians have famously been hanged from construction cranes in macabre public warnings.
Former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad once claimed that, “In Iran, we don’t have homosexuals.”
“If there was ever a time where it was OK to out somebody, it would be when it’s a leader of a repressive Islamic theocracy that hangs gay people by cranes,” a source told the Post.
According to the report, U.S. spy agencies view these allegations of Khamenei’s homosexuality as very credible.
“The fact that this was elevated to the highest of high levels shows you there’s some confidence in this,” the Post reported.
Iran’s previous dictator, the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, had serious doubts about his son taking over the Islamic Republic, according to a recent CBS News report. Khamenei saw his son as dumb, unqualified to lead, and may have known about his son’s sexual orientation.
“His father and others suspected he was gay and that was something that people were spreading to try to stop his ascension,” one Post source said.
Mojtaba, 56, was selected by Iran’s Council of Experts on March 8 to succeed his father, who was killed eight days earlier in an Israeli strike that opened the U.S.-Israeli campaign known as Operation Epic Fury. Mojtaba’s current condition and whereabouts remain unclear, and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said last week that Mojtaba may have been seriously “wounded and likely disfigured” by allied airstrikes.
In a Friday interview with Fox News, Trump publicly addressed the late Supreme Leader’s lack of confidence in his son.
“Their leadership is gone. Their second leadership is gone. Now their third leadership is in trouble, and this is not somebody that the father even wanted,” Trump said.
Trump has previously called Mojtaba a “lightweight” and an unacceptable choice to lead Iran.
In private, reports say Trump said he’s not sure the intelligence about Mojtaba even matters at this point. Iran is essentially leaderless, and Mojtaba is possibly dead, seriously wounded, or in a coma. The White House believes Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is now calling the shots.
The U.S. government is offering $10 million for information on Mojtaba’s location.
The allegation of homosexuality had reportedly circulated inside Iran as far back as May 2024, when a helicopter crash that killed then-President Ebrahim Raisi. Raisi had been the elder Khamenei’s preferred successor, not his son.