Iran’s Ayatollah Is Tweeting With New, Verified Checkmark Without Being Verified as Alive

The X account of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, is now boasting a blue checkmark. The verification violates the platform’s policies. But of far more importance as America seeks a deal to end the war is how the Iranian head of state can be a verified user when he isn’t being verified as alive.“The report of my death,” Samuel Clemens wrote of an 1897 New York Journal story, “was an exaggeration.” The author, who used the pen name Mark Twain, joked in his autobiography that “a paragraph or two” in The New York Sun “enables me to locate myself” and offer proof of life.Ayatollah Khamenei has yet to debunk rumors of his expiration. “‘Nah, nah,’” the TV journalist, Geraldo Rivera, said March 12 on NewsNation, “‘the Wicked Witch is dead.’ That’s what we should say. Prove that he’s alive. You say that that’s the Ayatollah Junior. … Yeah? Where is he?”Blue checkmarks are meant to ensure that X users are “active,” as in among the living. In 2022, Elon Musk began selling the feature as X Premium and gave gray X’s to government officials like the previous supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the current leader’s father. Policies to “deverify” misbehaving accounts and to ban anyone “under U.S. and any other applicable economic sanctions” were kept.This image taken from Iran state TV shows Mojtaba Khamenei, a son of Iran’s slain supreme leader, who has been named as the Islamic Republic’s next ruler. Iran state TV via APAmerica sanctioned Ayatollah Khamenei in 2019. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said then that the son of the supreme leader was “linked to a wide range of malign behaviors by the regime, including bombings of the U.S. Marine Barracks in Beirut in 1983, and the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association in 1994, as well as torture, extrajudicial killings, and repression of civilians.”Yet tweets are being posted under the blue checkmark at @Rahbarenghelab_ just as statements are issued in Ayatollah Khamenei’s name. On Friday, audio was released of him declaring Iran’s enemies “defeated.” This was treated as genuine, although cloning voices or editing together old clips is easy. Iran is believed, despite issuing false statements about sinking American aircraft carriers and shooting down its jets. By comparison, a rumor that President Trump had died was treated as credible in September. Conspiracy theories about President Biden being replaced by a doppelganger also thrived. Monday’s Washington Post cited American and Israeli sources saying that the supreme leader was “wounded, isolated and not responding to messages,” much less tweets. Every report that Ayatollah Khamenei is dead, dying, or — as Secretary of Defense Peter Hegseth put it, “wounded and likely disfigured” — is dismissed.Ayatollah Ali Khamenei waves to the crowd during a meeting with school and university students at Tehran, November 2, 2024. Office of the Iranian supreme leader via APPress outlets thrilled on Tuesday when Al Arabiya reported, citing Yedioth Ahronoth, that Iran “has secretly informed U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff that Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei approved talks to reach a potential deal.” There was not a hint of skepticism. The global agreement to accept Iran’s word echoes the plot of the 1973 film “Sleeper,” a Woody Allen farce. Mr. Allen’s character, Miles Monroe, is thrust forward to the year 2173 where he finds a dystopia governed by The Leader, who’s portrayed as hale and hearty to the public. In truth, The Leader was blown up by a bomb. A race ensues over cloning the dictator from the only piece that survived the assassination: His nose. Monroe joins the rebels led by Erno but expresses cynicism about his leadership being any better. “In six months,” he says, “we’ll be stealing Erno’s nose.” Like a clone, Ayatollah Khamenei carries the genes of the previous dictator. Yet if the son is dead, why further the fiction that he’s alive? America has never parleyed with the dead, although there were opportunities.Statues of Kim Il-sung, left, and Kim Jong-il at Pyongyang, February 16, 2022. AP/Jon Chol JinNorth Korea’s founder, Kim Il-sung, is deemed the country’s “eternal president.” Asked who would replace his fellow communist in Yugoslavia, President-for-Life Josip Tito, his party declared, “I Posle Tita, Tito,” or “After Tito, Tito.” The plan was for him to rule from beyond the grave. Because America and Israel had great success in decapitating Iran’s leadership, there may not be any one Iranian who can negotiate an end to the conflict. Yet there’s little point in negotiating with a ghost. The first step to fruitful talks is Ayatollah Khamenei proving that it’s the reports of his death, not the ones saying he’s alive, that are greatly exaggerated.

Iran’s Ayatollah Is Tweeting With New, Verified Checkmark Without Being Verified as Alive

Iran’s Ayatollah Is Tweeting With New, Verified Checkmark Without Being Verified as Alive

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