President Donald Trump was reportedly left amused after being briefed by US intelligence officials that Iran’s new Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, may be gay, according to a report by The New York Post citing sources familiar with the matter.
According to the report, Trump found the claim “hilarious” and “has not stopped laughing about it for days,” a senior intelligence official told the newspaper. Others present during the briefing were also said to have laughed at the allegation.
The claim was described by two intelligence community officials and a third person close to the White House, the report said.
All three sources told the New York Post that US spy agencies consider the allegation credible rather than disinformation intended to undermine Khamenei, 56, who was selected as Iran’s Supreme Leader on March 8 following the death of his father, Ali Khamenei.
Two of the sources said intelligence suggested Mojtaba had a long-term sexual relationship with his childhood tutor. A third source said the alleged relationship involved someone who previously worked for the Khamenei family.
Mojtaba Khamenei was reportedly injured in the same February 28 airstrike that killed his father and other members of his family. One source told the New York Post that while recovering, he allegedly made “aggressive” sexual overtures to male caregivers, possibly while under the influence of heavy medication.
US intelligence agencies do not have photographic evidence of the alleged attraction to men, but sources insisted the information was reliable. One source said it was “derived from one of the most protected sources that the government has.”
“The fact that this was elevated to the highest of high levels shows you there’s some confidence in this,” another source said.
According to the report, rumours about Mojtaba Khamenei’s sexuality had circulated inside Iran since at least the May 2024 helicopter crash that killed then-president Ebrahim Raisi, who had been widely viewed as the elder Khamenei’s preferred successor.
Within the US government, one insider said the information had been “a pretty closely held piece of information.”
Trump had previously dismissed Mojtaba Khamenei as a “lightweight” and an “unacceptable” choice to lead Iran. The new Supreme Leader was widely seen as unlikely to bend to US demands to abandon Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programmes that prompted Operation Epic Fury.
Some details from Mojtaba Khamenei’s past were cited as potentially lending credence to the allegation. A classified US diplomatic cable from 2008, later published by WikiLeaks, said Mojtaba had been treated in the UK for impotence.
The cable said he was treated during visits to London’s Wellington Hospital and Cromwell Hospital.
According to the leaked document, Mojtaba married “relatively late in life” around the age of 30 due to a medical issue. After several visits to the UK for treatment, the report said, his wife later became pregnant.
The State Department file noted that Mojtaba had been expected by his family to produce children quickly, but required additional treatment before his wife conceived.
Mojtaba Khamenei’s wife, Zahra, and their teenage son Mohammad Bagher reportedly died in the airstrike that killed his father. He is believed to have another son and a daughter.
The allegation was also indirectly referenced in a report by CBS News, which said the elder Khamenei had preferred another successor partly because of unspecified “issues” in Mojtaba’s “personal life.”
“His father and others suspected he was gay, and that was something that people were spreading to try to stop his ascension,” one of the sources told the New York Post.
Homosexual conduct is illegal in Iran. While the government allows gender reassignment surgery, some reports have said gay men are pressured into undergoing such procedures to avoid criminal penalties.
Sodomy is a capital offence in Iran, a country of around 93 million people. In some cases, gay men have reportedly been executed publicly as a warning.
“In Iran, we don’t have homosexuals,” former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said in 2007.
One of the sources told the New York Post that although outing someone is generally frowned upon, they believed it was justified in this case.
“If there was ever a time when 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,” the source said.
The report said Mojtaba Khamenei’s current whereabouts and the status of his recovery from the February 28 airstrike remain unclear.
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