Where is Iran's new Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei? Since he was appointed on March 8 he has issued no statements, made no public appearances, and in fact has been totally invisible.

Is he dead? Or perhaps severely wounded? When his father, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed in the first days of Operation Epic Fury his wife was amongst those killed by an Israeli missile strike on the Ayatollah Khamenei’s official residence. Perhaps he was there too, just the fact was covered up. One IntelliNews source in Tehran has claimed that he may already be dead.

Khamenei, 56, was formally appointed by a vote by the Assembly of Experts to succeed his father and has the backing of the hardline faction and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), but he has uttered not a single sentence since he took power.

"People were out on the streets supporting him," a source in Tehran told IntelliNews on March 11. "Still the only thing we have seen is a cardboard cutout in recent hours."

The remarks will deepen already intense speculation about whether Iran has effectively named a dead or incapacitated man as its supreme leader in a calculated attempt to project stability while keeping potential successors out of the crosshairs of Israeli and US targeting.

As IntelliNews has reported, US President Donald Trump’s emerging foreign policy modus operandi appears to turn on sanctioning countries that have nuclear weapons and decapitating the governments of those that don’t. It worked beautifully in Operation Absolute Resolve on January 3 where the US government removed the sitting president of Venezuela Nicolas Maduro. Trump is probably also looking at the military operation in Libya where Muammar Gaddafi was murdered and the fall of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, who fled to Russia. In all these cases their regimes immediately collapsed.

The difference with Iran is that the other three were virtually dictatorships: remove the man and you remove the regime. It’s not like that in Iran. It has a well-worn system of succession and while the Supreme Leader reigns supremely, there is no dynastic automatic succession, despite appearances to the contrary in this case.

But Khamenei could be in hospital. Iranian state media did admit he was “wounded in the war,” without giving details. His wife, his parents and one of his sons were killed in the strikes that killed his father so it seems likely he was in the same building. But no more information has been released.

Online claims have circulated suggesting he died in an airstrike days before his formal appointment, but after the assassination of his father. Some allege that Iran named a deceased man as supreme leader as they needed someone credible that could project continuity and stability in the face of the American onslaught. Tehran has neither confirmed nor denied the claims.

Iran's elite black-clad counterterrorism unit NOPO, the Special Force to Protect the Supreme Leader, has been deployed around his location but its presence has produced no verified sighting of the man it is supposedly guarding.

The backdrop to his appointment was one of open intimidation. The Israel Defence Forces posted a warning in Persian stating that Israel's hand would continue to pursue every successor and every person who sought to appoint one, explicitly threatening assembly members who participated in the selection process.

The announcement of the succession was delayed over security fears that naming him publicly would make him an immediate target.

Even before the war, Mojtaba Khamenei was a figure most Iranians had never heard speak. He gave no public lectures, no Friday sermons and no political addresses throughout his rise within the theocratic establishment.

He held no formal government position and appeared in public only occasionally at loyalist rallies.

His own father was reportedly deeply opposed to his rise to the top, fearing it would introduce a dynastic structure into the Islamic Republic.

"Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was not pleased with the idea of his son's leadership and never allowed this issue to be raised during his lifetime," one assembly member told Iran International.

Iran is now 11 days into a war that has killed its supreme leader, devastated its military infrastructure and effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz to international shipping. If Mojtaba Khamenei is also gone, Tehran has yet to tell anyone.