For at least a fortnight, there will be no hostilities between Iran and the United States-Israeli coalition.
“Based on conversations with Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Field Marshal Asim Munir, of Pakistan, and wherein they requested that I hold off the destructive force being sent tonight to Iran, and subject to the Islamic Republic of Iran agreeing to the COMPLETE, IMMEDIATE, and SAFE OPENING of the Strait of Hormuz, I agree to suspend the bombing and attack of Iran for a period of two weeks,” President Donald Trump announced Tuesday evening.
“This will be a double sided CEASEFIRE! The reason for doing so is that we have already met and exceeded all Military objectives, and are very far along with a definitive Agreement concerning Longterm PEACE with Iran, and PEACE in the Middle East.”
Iran announced roughly the same thing, which means that — for the time being — pretty much everyone is safe, including what’s left of Iran’s leadership.
That brings to mind an interesting question that many were asking on social media:
Now that there is a ceasefire, Mojtaba Khamenei should prove he’s alive and hold a press conference now that there’s a ceasefire.
He hasn’t been seen a single time in over a month.
Weird.
— Eyal Yakoby (@EYakoby) April 8, 2026
Yes — where art thou, Mojtaba Khamenei, the new Ayatollah of Iran?
The son of the late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was appointed his leader in the stead of his father, who was killed on the first day of Operation Epic Fury. He didn’t actually appear when he was named leader, mind you, but you could chalk this off (if you were naïve) on the fact that he didn’t want to meet the same fate.
A trickle of statements came out from the new Ayatollah Khamenei. Heck, one came out after the ceasefire was announced and read on Iranian state media.
“This is not the end of the war, but all military branches should follow the Supreme Leader’s order and cease fire,” he said in the statement, according to the Times of India.
But not even a video?
Of course, this brings up the most uncomfortable aspect of the immediate end of the ceasefire for Iran, which is that they’ll have to reveal who exactly is in charge. Khamenei the younger, according to intelligence reports, was comatose in a Moscow hospital and didn’t even know the war was going on.
Iran didn’t even go out of its way to acknowledge these reports, much less refute them, simply giving the impression that everything was proceeding as normal. They did acknowledge, however, that the younger Khamenei was wounded in the attack that killed his father.
And, in a Monday evening Times of London report, U.S. intelligence still said the “supreme leader” wasn’t in a condition to be leading anything.
“Mojtaba Khamenei is being treated in Qom in a severe condition, unable to be involved in any decision-making by the regime,” a memo obtained by the paper and based on American and Israeli intelligence read.
While the memo the Times obtained did not describe him as comatose, it did say he was still unconscious and being treated for a “severe” but unspecified medical condition.
Qom, roughly 90 miles south of Tehran, is considered a sacred city to adherents of the Shiite branch of Islam. That’s important in part because intelligence agencies had concluded the regime was “laying the groundworks needed to build a large mausoleum in Qom” and that this complex was being prepared for “more than one grave” — i.e., more than one Khamenei.
Again, how good or bad this is for the regime depends on your estimation of the younger Khamenei. His father’s wasn’t very high; he didn’t want his son to take the position, not just because of the theocratic principle that the Ayatollah cannot be a hereditary position but because he was apparently none-too-bright and also was rumored to have homosexual dalliances.
But, now that there’s been a two week cessation in hostilities, Tehran has a question to answer: Do they have a poor leader, or effectively no leader? And if the latter is the case, who even gets to negotiate terms here? That’s a lot to answer for in just a fortnight.
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