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Iran has officially confirmed that Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei was wounded in the US-Israeli strikes that killed his father, with a health ministry official describing the injuries as only “superficial.”

Getting into it: The acknowledgment came from health ministry spokesman Hossein Kermanpour, who said Mojtaba arrived at a hospital around 1:00 pm Tehran time on February 28 and “entered the operating room along with several other wounded individuals,” but downplayed the severity of what happened. “Apart from superficial injuries to the face, head and legs, which caused neither amputation nor any particular medical problem, nothing major had happened… From my perspective as a physician these were not considered serious injuries and required no special procedures apart from one or two stitches.”

This account stands in sharp contrast to US and Israeli assessments, with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth having described Mojtaba in March as “believed to be alive, wounded and disfigured,” and people in his orbit telling Reuters in mid-April that he was still healing from serious facial and leg wounds (though they maintained he remained “mentally sharp” and was joining meetings via audio conferencing).

The confirmation comes amid lingering mystery over Khamenei, who has not been seen or heard from publicly since the war began and has issued only written statements. According to US officials who spoke to CBS News, Khamenei is now hidden away in a location nobody will name, largely sealed off from everyone around him, and can only be reached through a deliberately convoluted network of couriers designed to prevent Israel or the US from assassinating him. Even the highest-ranking officials in the Iranian government reportedly don’t know where he is or how to contact him directly.

Those precautions have also complicated the ongoing negotiations to end the war, with US proposals sometimes sitting for long stretches before Iran can respond. “This is why you see people saying things like, ‘The supreme leader has agreed to the framework,’ or ‘We’re waiting to hear back on the final deal points.’ Every piece of information he receives is dated, and there’s a lot of latency to his responses,” one official said.

The officials added that Khamenei is far from alone in going underground, with most senior Iranian leaders now spending weeks on end hunkered down in fortified bunkers and avoiding communication with one another.

This all comes as questions persist over how much power Mojtaba actually wields, with some sources suggesting authority has shifted away from the office of the supreme leader toward senior commanders in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as he remains under medical care, and with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu assessing earlier this month that while Mojtaba appeared to be “trying to exert his authority,” he holds considerably less of it than his father did.