While U.S. and Israeli intelligence agencies are mobilizing all efforts to locate Iran's new Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, it has been revealed that they have found no traces, such as phone call records.
The British newspaper The Times reported that the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Israel's Mossad are experiencing difficulties tracking and tracing Mojtaba.
Mojtaba was appointed as Iran's Supreme Leader after his father, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, was killed in a bombing on the first day of the war between the U.S. and Iran last February.
However, for the past five months, citing security reasons, he has not revealed his actual appearance or even his voice, and he did not even attend the funeral of his father, Ali Khamenei.
The Times pointed out that tracking the whereabouts of Mojtaba Khamenei, who has been kept under such top secrecy, is currently a top priority for U.S. and Israeli intelligence agencies, adding that these intelligence agencies, which possess some of the world's highest-level intelligence capabilities, are struggling for five months because Mojtaba is maintaining "complete silence."
This means that Mojtaba has not made phone calls or even turned on laptop computers during this time.
The Times estimated that Mojtaba "suffered severe facial injuries from the bombing while he was with his father, is hiding deep in an underground bunker, and cannot come out into the sunlight for fear of being captured by U.S. spy satellites."
Although Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian once mentioned meeting Mojtaba Khamenei face-to-face, even that has not been confirmed whether it is true.
As cyber tracking has yielded no results, these intelligence agencies are relying more on human intelligence, or "HUMINT," rather than wiretapping and surveillance technology.
Currently, figuring out whether Mojtaba is actually alive is the top priority, and if he is alive, they are in a situation where they must find the locations of underground tunnels and military bunkers in Tehran that are likely candidates for his hideout.
(Reported by Kim Taewon | Video by Kim Na-on | Graphics by Yang Hye-min | Produced by SBS Digital News)
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