The New York Times published a detailed account this week of Iran’s new leadership structure, based on interviews with more than 20 Iranian officials, former officials, Revolutionary Guard members and individuals close to the new supreme leader. It deserves a careful read, but not for the reasons the Times intends.The piece describes the new supreme leader, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, as gravely wounded, communicating via handwritten notes passed through a motorcycle courier chain, mentally sharp but with injuries that make speaking difficult, deliberately avoiding video out of concern for appearing weak. The key details of his condition come from unnamed Iranian officials. There is no photograph, no medical record, no independent verification of any kind. The article does not ask readers to weigh the incentives behind those sources. It presents the account as fact.Reporting from inside an authoritarian state, especially one at war, where the regime decides who speaks to Western journalists and what they are permitted to say, requires deep scepticism that the article does not apply. The sources describing Mojtaba’s condition have a direct interest in the picture they are painting: a living, mentally engaged supreme leader who has simply delegated, but remains very much involved, during a difficult period. That picture serves the regime well. It preserves the fiction of functioning leadership. Perhaps th …
