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Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei has disappeared from public view for months, and according to intelligence officials and former operatives, the CIA and Israel’s Mossad are engaged in an intense effort to determine whether Iran’s new supreme leader is alive, where he is hiding, and what role he is playing as President Trump weighs his next steps in the conflict with Tehran, the Times-UK reports.

Following the death of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in an Israeli airstrike on February 28, Mojtaba assumed the country’s highest religious position. Since then, however, he has effectively vanished, prompting American and Israeli intelligence agencies to launch a joint search for the elusive leader.

Their biggest obstacle is silence. Intelligence sources believe Mojtaba has avoided using telephones, computers, or any electronic communications for roughly five months. Reports suggest he is concealed inside a fortified underground shelter, suffering from facial injuries sustained during the strike that killed his father, and is avoiding any exposure that could allow U.S. satellites to detect his movements.

The campaign that located Ali Khamenei relied heavily on advanced cyber capabilities. American and Israeli intelligence reportedly infiltrated Tehran’s surveillance systems, including traffic cameras, allowing analysts from the NSA and Israel’s elite Unit 8200 to identify the movements of the supreme leader’s security detail and senior commanders. That intelligence ultimately enabled the strike that eliminated them.

Finding Mojtaba presents a far more complicated challenge. Even if Iran’s military establishment now holds much of the nation’s real power, intelligence officials believe the new supreme leader remains central to key regime decisions, particularly those involving military operations. Yet no reliable trace of his location has surfaced.

Rather than depending on electronic surveillance, intelligence agencies are increasingly turning to traditional human intelligence—known as HUMINT—to solve the mystery.

Some within the intelligence community have even questioned whether Mojtaba survived at all. They suspect elements within the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps may be maintaining the illusion that he is alive in order to preserve the regime’s legitimacy during its confrontation with the United States.

Investigators are therefore pursuing two fundamental questions: Is Mojtaba still alive, and if so, where is he hiding? Analysts believe possible locations include an extensive network of underground tunnels beneath Tehran or a heavily protected military facility near the holy city of Qom.

With digital surveillance yielding few results, Mossad is leaning heavily on its network of informants inside Iran, including Iranian citizens who have become disillusioned with the regime, hoping someone can provide the breakthrough intelligence.

“The challenge for Israel is the same problem we had in trying to find and release hostages in Gaza,” said Rami Igra, a former division chief of Mossad.

“Israeli intelligence controlled the whole of Gaza, every toilet was rigged [bugged] to trace where they were being held but we didn’t find them. There was too much reliance on electronic technology and not enough on real people, human intelligence.

“Mojtaba may not be using a phone but if he exists at all, he has other forms of communication, like little pieces of paper. They are using multiple layers of couriers carrying messages.

“These couriers are unaware of what they’re doing, other than taking messages from one person to the next. So, if they [Mossad] find him it will be because of a human element. But the regime in Tehran is aware of this danger.”

The approach echoes the operation that led American intelligence to Osama bin Laden. Rather than locating the terrorist leader directly, the CIA painstakingly followed one of his trusted couriers until the trail ultimately led to his compound. Israeli intelligence is believed to be attempting a similar strategy with anyone carrying messages to or from Mojtaba.

“The only real way to get to Mojtaba is to recruit an agent who is in contact with him,” said Igra.

“But this is very difficult because there is tough screening in Iran of all people close to him, and probably only two or three members of the IRGC know how to contact him.

“We can also track other people using their phones and listen in on discussions about Mojtaba and where he might be. Iran is a country where the people are suffering from lack of money and we have ways of offering rewards on the internet for information,” he said.

Questions have also emerged regarding claims made by senior Iranian officials. President Masoud Pezeshkian recently asserted that he personally spent more than two hours with Mojtaba and that the supreme leader was recovering well.

“This is bullshit,” Igra said. “The Iranian president never saw him.”

Former Mossad lieutenant colonel Avner Avraham believes another layer of deception is complicating the search. According to him, the regime may be employing body doubles to obscure Mojtaba’s true whereabouts.

“They are also using doubles, just like Saddam Hussein did,” he said.

He added: “Mojtaba stays in different locations and people are employed to feed him. But what they don’t know is whether the food they are providing is for the real Mojtaba or a double. So they go home at night and believe they are looking after the supreme leader when it fact he’s probably a fake.”

Despite months of secrecy, many believe the Iranian public will eventually expect proof that its new supreme leader is alive. Mojtaba notably did not appear at his father’s funeral, and aside from official wartime statements issued under his name, no public evidence has emerged confirming his condition.

Avraham suggested Mojtaba could eventually follow a strategy similar to that used by Osama bin Laden while in hiding, releasing an audio message without revealing his appearance.

“Even if he doesn’t show his face, he could use his voice to give a message to the Iranian people,” Avraham said. “But that could make him vulnerable. It’s possible to glean information from the voice file, such as the type of recorder used and possibly the location where the voice was recorded.”

A former senior U.S. defense official believes intelligence gathering inside Iran has become significantly more difficult since the February strike.

“I am quite sure, given [the airstrike] on February 28, that Mojtaba is practicing much better operational security and, as a result, human intelligence will be more important in the hunt for him.

“I am sceptical about US humint since Iran has been a denied area for 40 years. Israeli human intelligence is clearly much better but it also has its limits.”

Should American and Israeli intelligence eventually pinpoint Mojtaba’s location, the discovery would hand Washington and Jerusalem an enormously consequential decision.

As one former senior U.S. intelligence official put it: “I think we have probably dispatched enough Iranian leaders for the time being, unless there is very strong confidence that the current leader will be replaced by someone committed to a democratic future for Iran and who will ride in on a white horse.”

{Matzav.com}