Too Good to Check: Khamenei’s 19th Nervous Breakdown?

Here’s a piece of advice learned the hard way: Be careful about war-time rumors, even the ones that fit your preferred narrative. Maybe especially those that fit your preferred narrative.

Today we have a case in point, this one from the Mossad’s social-media folks. It popped up yesterday, but didn’t get too much notice until it began appearing in some media reports as context for the catastrophic situation faced by the Iranians. Supposedly, the octogenarian Supreme Leader has suffered a mental breakdown and is now being isolated by his family and his aides — what’s left of them:

Israeli source confirms the report from Iran International that has obtained information from a Western intelligence source, according to which Khamenei has been removed from making key decisions due to his poor mental state, and military commanders are hiding the reality of the…

— Mossad Commentary (@MOSSADil) June 16, 2025

… and military commanders are hiding the reality of the war from him in order to manage his mental state.

Granted, this would explain a few things. First off, for a regime that loves to preach martyrdom, Khamenei skedaddled off to shelter pretty danged skippy from the moment Israel began hitting targets near Tehran. That certainly is understandable in the context of normal countries protecting the head of state, but Iran is based on radical-Islamist extremism and its glorification of martyrdom. They openly brag about their embrace of martyrdom as a way to intimidate their enemies, speaking of their love of death, and impose that policies on their subjugated populations. 

That’s why Tel Aviv has bomb shelters, and Tehran doesn’t:

While Israelis have a plethora of public bomb shelters to help weather the storm of attacks from Tehran, Iranians claim that not only is their infrastructure lacking, but there is also a “culture of martyrdom” that keeps them from seeking refuge.

“In this society, going to the shelters when there is a jet fighting or looming [airstrike] around it indicates you’re chicken-hearted,” an Iranian journalist told the BBC’s Global News Podcast. “So you should [be] brave and brace for the bombardments and enjoy martyrdom.” 

To this point, Iran has yet to officially shut down any businesses despite the escalating attacks from Israel and Tehran officials repeatedly stating that the nation is at war.

So how does it look to these same Tehranis who have to “enjoy martyrdom” that Ali Khamenei and his sons get to enjoy bomb shelters? It ain’t exactly a confidence-builder in the joys of martyrdom. 

Khamenei’s isolation goes beyond just the physical protection necessary to prevent an Israeli bomb from ending the regime, however. Apart from one recorded speech at the beginning of the conflict and a few tweets, Khamenei has been all but silent while his regime suffers one humiliation after another at the hands of the Israelis. His account posted a few tweets on the first day of the conflict, but the pace slowed considerably after June 13. Recent tweets appear to be composed by aides, and the last one was almost a full day ago:

“Help from Allah and an imminent conquest” (Holy Quran: 61:13).

The Islamic Republic will triumph over the Zionist regime by the will of God. pic.twitter.com/sUZvapaV4G

— Khamenei.ir (@khamenei_ir) June 16, 2025

Khamenei’s absence from public view during the war, along with the evisceration of the top ranks of command in the IRGC and other military and intelligence bureaus, creates a very weird vacuum at the worst possible time for a besieged nation. That is a nearly inexplicable choice, especially for a radical Islamist cult whose rule depends on iron-fisted tyranny over a subject population. That is what the Mossad may be exploiting with the suggestion that Khamenei has gone non compos mentis in the crisis, and that his family and aides are attempting to prop him up to cling to power.

That very well may be possible. But thus far, the only evidence for it is Khamenei’s refusal to poke his head above ground, which seems pretty darned rational to me. Gutless? Yes. Hypocritical? You bet. But if it were me, I’d stay in the bunker until the Israelis got tired of kicking the ever-lovin’ snot out of my regime, too. 

And the situation is bad enough as it is, the Economic Times notes:

Khamenei has seen his main military and security advisers killed by Israeli air strikes, leaving major holes in his inner circle and raising the risk of strategic errors, according to five people familiar with his decision-making process.

One of those sources, who regularly attends meetings with Khamenei, described the risk of miscalculation to Iran on issues of defence and internal stability as “extremely dangerous”.

Several senior military commanders have been killed since Friday including Khamenei’s main advisers from the Revolutionary Guards, Iran’s elite military force: the Guards’ overall commander Hossein Salami, its aerospace chief Amir Ali Hajizadeh who headed Iran’s ballistic missile program and spymaster Mohammad Kazemi.

These men were part of the supreme leader’s inner circle of roughly 15-20 advisers comprising Guards commanders, clerics, and politicians, according to the sources who including three people who attend or have attended meetings with the leader on major issues and two close to officials who regularly attend.

The Jerusalem Post suggests that Khamenei’s declining mental state is an assumption used in war planning now by the IDF. They also suggests that this presumption is spreading to other countries and parties:

Several of Khamenei’s most trusted senior IRGC commanders have been assassinated by Israel. This goes on top of a year in which Khamenei’s proxy leaders – Yahya Sinwar, Ismail Haniyeh, and Hassan Nasrallah – have all been killed by the Jewish state. His ally in Syria, Bashar al-Assad fled the country last December as his regime fell after 13 years of civil war.

The cumulative psychological strain, the reports suggested, may have triggered a nervous breakdown, with some of Iran’s top commanders allegedly sidelining the supreme leader from critical military decisions.

Israel’s repeated targeting of senior IRGC officials, which Jerusalem views as legitimate military responses to Iranian aggression, has not only dealt severe operational blows to Iran’s regional influence but may have also rattled the regime’s internal stability.

Officially, Tehran has dismissed the reports of Khamenei’s deteriorating health as propaganda.

State television continues to broadcast carefully choreographed footage of the Supreme Leader meeting officials and clerics, reading prepared speeches, and presiding over religious ceremonies. But among the Iranian opposition, exiles, and even some regional intelligence services, a different narrative is gaining ground: that Iran may already be functioning without its supreme leader fully in control.

The problem here is that it doesn’t look like anyone is in full control in Iran. That may not be a mental-breakdown issue but an organizational-breakdown issue created by Israeli intel and military action. The wipeout of top-ranked officers and leaders has created all sorts of holes in necessary collaboration, creating even more gaps in capabilities that the destruction of facilities and materiel by Israel. It’s still entirely possible that Khamenei is exercising leadership but that there are increasingly fewer people answering the phone. 

If that were the case, though, one would think that Khamenei would start making public appearances to hold his regime together. That’s not happening, and it’s certainly worth wondering why. Is it sheer cowardice? Or is Khamenei mentally incapacitated by the humiliations of the past five days?

Let’s salute this question mark with the headline reference, the Rolling Stones classic from the 1960s: