GNITN - Special Edition

Israel At War – Day 408

Is He Pushing Up Daisies?

Did Another One Bite The Dust?

X is going wild over rumors that Ayatollah Khamanei is dead or close as we read in an article from WND.com:

Several social media posts emerged on Saturday alleging that Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei slipped into a coma. As was to be expected, there was no official confirmation of a worsening of the supreme leader's health.

But it’s not just X telling us this, we also hear from a report from msn.com that he’s in a coma:

Multiple social media posts surfaced Saturday claiming that Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, 85, is seriously ill and is in a state of coma. The claims started going viral on social media on the heels of a report by the New York Times earlier in October that Ali Khamenei is "seriously ill." However, as of now, there is no official word from any sources about further deterioration of the Ayatollah's health.

As we’ve learned about so many other things that people initially say are not true, this one could have the ring of truth to it. However there are doubters:

Jason Brodsky, the Policy Director at United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) and a Non-Resident Scholar at the Middle East Institute, debunked those claims saying that they are most likely false. He added that Ali Khamenei was last spotted on November 7.

Brodsky posted this on X:

"Tweets about how #Iran's regime's supreme leader is in a coma or has even died are all over my timeline," he wrote. "There is not one credible news outlet which has reported as such. So please be careful what you post. Khamenei was last seen in public on November 7. "

As I read the many responses, no one in that thread believes it at all. We need to remember though that talk of Khamenei being gravely ill started late last month with some talking about his successor:

The New York Times report, published on October 27, claimed that Khamenei is suffering from a major medical condition and is believed to be "seriously ill." The report went as far as to claim that Ali Khamenei's eldest son, Mojtaba Khamenei, would succeed him.

Iran Responds

Iran, sensing that the world was actually believing that their supreme leader was actually either dead or on death’s door published a picture of him as we’re told in an article from The Times Of Israel:

Iran publishes a picture of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei today after widespread unsourced reports on social media that he was either in a coma or had died.

The image shows him in his office talking to Iran’s Ambassador to Lebanon Mojtaba Amani, who was injured in Beirut in Israel’s September pager attacks against the Hezbollah terror group.

As we saw earlier, poster’s on X still weren’t buying it:

Multiple reports on social media claimed in recent days that Khamenei was in a coma. Other reports claimed that he had died or that he had nominated his son as his successor in a recent secret meeting.

One person who posted was told that the pictures of Khamenei in a hospital bed were actually from 2014:

There are currently many unsourced reports claiming Ali Khamenei, the current Supreme Leader of Iran, is in a coma.

Accompanying these reports are "leaked" or "unconfirmed" images - Used to give the unsourced reports credibility.

These images aren't recent - They are from 2014.

Although it is tempting to believe that Iranians could be without a leader who cares more for eliminating Israel than he does for them, I’m still waiting for proof I can fully trust. And even if the rumors are true, his son could very well be just as evil as him so we’d need more than one being traded for a younger version. Personally, Israel will need to do the heavy lifting here and just bomb Iran back to the proverbial stone ages for the Iranian people to be free from the current tyranny. It could happen though.