Hunt for the invisible Ayatollah: Spies have three theories about Khamenei’s whereabouts, while others spread extraordinary rumours about his private life. Yet there is a final irony…

More than five months after Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was killed in a US-Israeli airstrike on Tehran, his successor and son, Mojtaba Khamenei, has not been seen or heard from in public. Mojtaba, 56, who was reportedly badly injured in the same strike that killed his father, sister and other relatives, formally took over on 9 March but has since made no live appearance, missed his father's funeral in July, and broke with three decades of tradition by failing to deliver an address for the Iranian new year. His prolonged absence, at a moment when the US has resumed air strikes and tensions with Iran remain acute, has fuelled speculation about whether he is even alive, raising serious questions about who is actually in control of the country.

Analysts and security sources cited in the article put forward three competing theories about his whereabouts: that he is alive but too injured to appear publicly while directing affairs from a hidden location inside Iran, possibly an underground bunker near Tehran or Qom; that he has fled to Russia; or a third, unstated possibility. Iranian officials, including President Masoud Pezeshkian, insist he is recovering and increasingly engaged, but Western and Israeli intelligence sources, including a former Mossad official, are sceptical, pointing to his conspicuous absence from his father's funeral as evidence of possible incapacitation rather than caution.