Questions Abound on Health of Iran's Khamenei

WASHINGTON — Speculation is mounting in American and Israeli intelligence and defense circles about the declining health of Iran's 67-year-old supreme leader, who is believed to be suffering from cancer.

At the end of December, Iran analysts inside the intelligence community were asked to draw up possible succession scenarios for Ayatollah Ali Khamenei after he appeared on state-run television looking gaunt and sickly. On January 4, stories spread throughout the Internet and some Iranian exile publications that Ayatollah Khamenei was dead.

On January 8, the supreme leader addressed crowds in Qom. From a balcony, he delivered a fiery speech, declaring that his country would never stop enriching uranium.

Yesterday, Iran released an official photograph of him meeting with the secretary of Russia's security council, Igor Ivanov. Iranian TV reported that during the meeting, the supreme leader suggested that the two countries enter an anti-American energy alliance.

The health of Ayatollah Khamenei is of immense interest to the West. He is believed to have led the recent political pushback against President Ahmadinejad, a former intelligence commander in Iran's Revolutionary Guard who has threatened to wipe Israel off the map and has used his power of patronage and appointment to fill his country's civil bureaucracy with many of his old Revolutionary Guard allies.

However, the supreme leader is no moderate, either. The general in charge of the Quds Force, which American soldiers are now hunting in Iraq, reports directly to him.

The death of Ayatollah Khamenei would likely set off a battle for succession. Among the top candidates for supreme leader is a spiritual leader and mentor to Mr. Ahmadinejad who has advocated an apocalyptic version of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's Shiite Islam, Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi. Another is a former Iranian president and interlocutor with the Israelis when America and the Jewish state sold arms to Iran in exchange for Hezbollah's release of hostages in Lebanon, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.

An American intelligence analyst said yesterday that he is confident America's intelligence agencies would know if the Iranian supreme leader had indeed died. "There are all kinds of things we are looking for. We will know because there will be a power struggle, and it will be impossible to keep that secret. This is not the Soviet Union or North Korea," the analyst, who requested anonymity, said.

The deputy director of research at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Patrick Clawson, said he does not think Ayatollah Khamenei is dead. But he also said the West has notoriously missed the deaths of Iranian leaders.

"Nobody knew Khomeini was sick; no one knew the shah was sick," he said. "We did not have any idea these guys were going to die. And I don't think we will know about Khamenei until the day it happens."