US President Donald Trump on Wednesday said he believes Iran's supreme leader, who has not been seen in public since taking over after his father's killing in February, remains alive.
"I don't think he's dead. He was very seriously wounded. The left side of his body, the arm, the leg, the whole thing. He was very seriously wounded. But I don't think he's dead," Trump said in an interview with conservative radio host Glenn Beck.
Officially, Mojtaba Khamenei continues to lead his country under US and Israeli attack. However, his public absence and the rise to power of veteran Revolutionary Guards figures has fueled speculation that he is either dead or not fully in command.
His father was killed in bombing at the start of the US-Israeli assault.
Trump -- who has already declared victory over Iran on multiple occasions but remains unable to force the opening of the Hormuz sea route or force Iran to surrender its nuclear materials -- said again that military and economic pressure was working.
"Those things are going toward a very big victory," he said. "We're going to have a big victory here very soon."
Trump also insisted that the Strait of Hormuz, where Iran's military has disrupted and to a large extent blocked shipping, is in fact fully open.
"You could really say, you know, because the Strait is open. We take a lot of ships through the Strait now. We're taking them in. The mines are gone," he said.
"We cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon. That's what it's all about. That's 99.9 percent. We cannot let them because they are crazy and they will use it," he said, before adding that he had already "stopped it twice."
