IRAN’S NEW LEADER: OUT OF OFFICE, IN QOM

Iran’s brand-new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, is reportedly out of action and getting treated in Qom, because apparently even an all-powerful regime needs a quiet room when the plot gets inconvenient. According to a diplomatic memo passed around like a very serious game of telephone among Gulf allies, and allegedly built on American and Israeli intelligence, the 56-year-old is unconscious with a “severe” medical condition and, in the most bureaucratically reassuring phrasing imaginable, is “unable to be involved in any decision making by the regime.” That does raise the small question of what exactly qualifies someone to be a supreme leader these days besides family name, mystery, and a calendar full of unexplained absences. The regime says he only suffered a “minor” leg injury in the strike that killed his father, mother, wife, and son, which is certainly one way to describe a catastrophe if your public relations department has a sacred oath to understate everything except the propaganda. While the whole operation remains cloaked in reverence, secrecy, and sacred geography, the