American intelligence officials briefed President Trump last week on an assessment that Iran's newly selected Supreme Leader, 56-year-old Mojtaba Khamenei, may be gay. The president, according to one source familiar with the briefing, "has not stopped laughing about it for days."
The New York Post reported that the intelligence, described by one source as "derived from one of the most protected sources that the government has," was elevated to the presidential level, a detail that itself signals confidence in the underlying assessment. As a second source put it:
"The fact that this was elevated to the highest of high levels shows you there's some confidence in this."
Mojtaba Khamenei was selected as Supreme Leader on March 8, following the death of his father, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in a Feb. 28 airstrike. His wife, Zahra, and son, Mohammad Bagher, also reportedly died in that strike. Trump had previously dismissed Mojtaba as a "lightweight" and "unacceptable."
The intelligence assessment didn't materialize out of thin air. A classified 2008 U.S. diplomatic cable documented a telling medical history: Mojtaba, who married around age 30, reportedly traveled to the United Kingdom three separate times for treatment of an impotence problem.
The leaked cable stated the issue was "treated and eventually resolved during three extended visits to the UK, at Wellington and Cromwell Hospitals, London."
It didn't end there. Mojtaba required a fourth visit, lasting two months, before his wife became pregnant. According to the cable, his family had expected him to produce children quickly.
One of The Post's sources added a layer that goes beyond the medical record:
"His father and others suspected he was gay and that was something that people were spreading to try to stop his ascension."
Sources also described allegations of a long-term same-sex relationship and sexual overtures Mojtaba reportedly made while recovering from injuries. One insider noted that "it's been a pretty closely held piece of information," suggesting this intelligence has circulated within the national security community for some time without reaching the public.
Iran hangs gay people from cranes. This is not a figure of speech. The Islamic Republic executes homosexuals as a matter of state policy, rooted in theocratic law that its Supreme Leader is charged with upholding and enforcing.
The regime has built its moral authority on a version of religious purity so absolute that former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stood before a global audience in 2007 and declared, with a straight face:
"In Iran, we don't have homosexuals."
Now the man sitting atop that entire apparatus may himself be the thing his government kills people for being.
One of The Post's sources framed the moral calculus in terms that are hard to argue with:
"If there was ever a time where 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."
That's not cruelty. That's accountability. The Western left has spent decades insisting that the personal is political. Here is a case where a man's private life collides directly with the ideology he now commands. If Mojtaba Khamenei presides over the execution of gay Iranians while allegedly living the very life those Iranians are killed for, the hypocrisy isn't incidental. It's the whole story.
Consider where Iran stands. Its former president, Ebrahim Raisi, died in a helicopter crash in May 2024. Its longtime Supreme Leader was killed in an airstrike.
The son who replaced him is described by the President of the United States as a lightweight, and by U.S. intelligence as potentially concealing a secret that would delegitimize him in the eyes of the theocratic establishment he now leads.
Mojtaba Khamenei's current whereabouts and condition remain murky. He governs, to the extent he governs at all, over a population of 93 million people in a nation that has lost its two most powerful figures in under a year. The regime's foundation is religious authority. If that authority is built on a lie, the cracks run all the way down.
No official White House comment has been provided on the briefing. All claims rely on anonymous sources, and no independent evidence has been publicly presented. Those caveats matter.
But the fact that this intelligence was deemed credible enough to put in front of the president tells you something about how seriously the national security establishment is taking it.
Intelligence like this isn't just gossip. In the context of negotiations, pressure campaigns, and the broader effort to constrain Iran's nuclear ambitions, understanding the vulnerabilities of a new and untested supreme leader is foundational work.
A leader with a secret this explosive is a leader who can be pressured, not just by Washington, but by rivals within his own regime. Iran's internal power dynamics have never been more unstable, and Mojtaba Khamenei has never been more exposed.
The Islamic Republic spent decades projecting an image of ideological certainty so complete that it could justify executing its own citizens for who they are. Now the man at the very top may embody the contradiction that unravels the whole charade.
No wonder the president can't stop laughing.