IRAN’S supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is reportedly hiding in an underground bunker – out of fear he could be wiped out by US airstrikes.
The 86-year-old bloodthirsty autocrat is said to have fled to a heavily fortified shelter linked by a maze of tunnels under Tehran as an American armada powers toward the Persian Gulf.
The Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group boasts five squadrons of fighter jets and at least three missile destroyers Credit: AP
His move came after senior military officials warned the ageing 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 is now running office and acting as the regime’s main channel to the executive branch.
Publicly, Tehran is pounding 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 the US Navy was sending a massive armada to the Middle East, in a warning shot aimed squarely at Tehran after days of escalating threats.
The Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group – carrying five squadrons of fighter jets and at least three missile destroyers – is now moving from the Indian Ocean toward waters off Iran.
Iran’s response has been predictable bluster, with President Masoud Pezeshkian threatening that any US or Israeli strike on Khamenei would be treated as “an all-out war against us.”
Iran’s national security parliamentary commission 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, normally eager to sermonise online, has gone silent on X since January 17.
This is not the first time Khamenei has vanished underground.
During last year’s short but intense 12-day war with Israel, he also retreated to a bunker and reportedly even drafted a list of potential successors in case he was killed.
His most recent online threat promised retribution against internal and international “criminals” he blamed for the massive protests that have ripped across Iran since December 28.
Those demonstrations, sparked by economic collapse and the worst drought in decades, have been met with staggering violence.
The death toll has now exploded past 33,000.
New figures suggest around 33,100 protesters have been killed in just two weeks.
One source described the staggering number as “off the scale,” adding: “This was genocide.”
Nearly 98,000 more have been wounded, with research showing 30 per cent suffering eye injuries.
Hospital data indicates hundreds were executed outright, including at least 468 in Tehran alone.
Iranian protesters were reportedly being hunted down and executed in hospital beds Credit: AFP
Inside Iran’s hospitals, doctors describe scenes closer to a war zone than a public health system.
One surgeon said pellet injuries quickly gave way to live ammunition, with “war bullets” fired at close range.
Operating rooms were overwhelmed, stretchers piled up, and surgeons worked nonstop through the night as patients poured in faster than they could be treated.
“This was not policing,” one doctor told The Guardian.
“This was something else.”
As the blood flowed at home, Iran’s rulers doubled down on threats abroad.
Revolutionary Guard commanders warned they had their “finger on the trigger,” vowing to unleash chaos if the US intervened.
Exiled crown prince Reza Pahlavi accused the regime of “waging war on its own people,” saying nearly as many Iranians have been killed in weeks as Americans lost over years in Vietnam.
THE SUN
