Iran’s Ayatollah ‘moves underground to hide in bunker’ over fears of US strikes as regime ‘wages war on its own people’
Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is reportedly hiding in an underground bunker for fear of being wiped out by US airstrikes.
The bloodthirsty 86-year-old autocrat is believed to have fled to a heavily fortified shelter connected by a maze of tunnels beneath Tehran as a US armada headed for the Persian Gulf.
The move came after senior military officials warned the aging leader that a US strike could be imminent, according to Iran International.
Khamenei has handed day-to-day control of the Islamic Republic to his youngest son, Masoud Khamenei, 53, who now rules power and acts as the regime’s main conduit to the executive branch.
Publicly, Tehran is beating its chest. But in private, its supreme leader seems to be hiding from the wrath of Donald Trump and his troops.
The US president said Friday that the US Navy was sending a massive armada to the Middle East, in a warning shot aimed directly at Tehran after days of escalating threats.
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The Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group – carrying five squadrons of fighter jets and at least three guided-missile destroyers – is now moving from the Indian Ocean to the waters off Iran.
Iran’s response was predictable: President Masoud Pezeshkian threatened that any US or Israeli strike against Khamenei would be treated as “a total war against us.”
Iran’s parliamentary committee on national security went further, declaring that any attack on the embattled Ayatollah would trigger a declaration of jihad.
Yet the regime’s actions tell a different story. Khamenei, usually eager to preach online, has remained silent on X since January 17.
It’s unclear exactly when he went into hiding, but the sudden calm of a man who rarely misses an opportunity to strike a posture raised eyebrows.
This is not the first time that Khamenei has disappeared underground.
During the short but intense 12-day war against Israel last year, he also retreated to a bunker and even reportedly drew up a list of potential successors in case he was killed.
His most recent online threat promised retaliation against the internal and international “criminals” he blamed for the massive protests that have torn Iran apart since December 28.
These protests, sparked by economic collapse and the worst drought in decades, were met with stunning violence.
The death toll has now exploded, surpassing 33,000.
New figures suggest around 33,100 protesters have been killed in just two weeks.
One source called the staggering number “off the scale,” adding: “It was genocide.”
Nearly 98,000 other people were injured, and research shows that 30 percent of them suffer eye injuries.
Hospital data indicates that hundreds of people have been executed, including at least 468 in Tehran alone.
In Iranian hospitals, doctors describe scenes closer to a war zone than a public health system.
A surgeon said gunshot wounds quickly gave way to live ammunition, with “war bullets” fired at close range.
Operating rooms were overwhelmed, stretchers were piled up, and surgeons worked nonstop through the night as patients flooded in faster than they could be treated.
“It wasn’t policing,” one doctor told the Guardian.
“It was something else.”
As blood flowed at home, Iranian leaders redoubled their threats abroad.
Revolutionary Guard commanders warned they had their “finger on the trigger,” vowing to unleash chaos if the United States intervened.
Exiled Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi accused the regime of “waging a war against its own people,” saying almost as many Iranians were killed in a few weeks as Americans lost over the years in Vietnam.
Calling for urgent Western action, he warned: “We are at a point of no return and that is why it is so crucial that the world helps, otherwise the situation will be even more of the same.” »
He added: “It is a moral obligation. There cannot be simply a condemnation and then a return to business as usual. The West cannot throw protesters under a bus.”
