Report: Iran's Supreme Leader Hospitalized in Critical Condition

Report: Iran's Supreme Leader Hospitalized in Critical Condition

Arab media reports Ayatollah Khamenei brought for urgent care in Tehran after several of his body systems fail.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei Reuters

Just in time for Purim, the Jewish holiday celebrating the redemption of the Jewish people from plots of genocide in ancient Persia, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was reportedly hospitalized in critical condition on Wednesday.

According to Arab media reports cited by Israel Hayom, Khamenei was urgently brought to a hospital in Tehran after several of his bodily systems had already failed.

The reports add that the 76-year-old supreme leader of the Islamic regime has undergone surgery and remains in critical condition.

Recently it has been reported that he was suffering from prostate cancer which had spread to additional parts of his body, and due to his poor health condition he had largely ceased taking part in public events.

The hospitalization comes just days after Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu addressed Congress on Tuesday to warn of the existential threat to Israel and the world that Iran poses, urging America to avoid the deal being formed on Iran's nuclear deal ahead of a March 31 deadline for talks.

Lending some credence to the reports is the fact that Khamenei's official Twitter account hasn't been updated since Netanyahu's speech on Tuesday, when he wrote the "US is now facing a #dilemma. It should either stop unlimited services to #Israel or they’ll lose more face in the world."

Khamenei has threatened Israel with destruction numerous times in the past; last October he used his annual message to Hajj pilgrims heading to Mecca to call for Muslim unity to bring Israel's "annihilation."

And last November he launched a series of anti-Israel Tweets, writing in one "This barbaric, wolflike & infanticidal regime of #Israel which spares no crime has no cure but to be annihilated."

Khamenei has demanded Iran be allowed to increase to 190,000 centrifuges in the deal being formulated, an amount that would allow it to produce a nuclear arsenal within weeks.

And yet it was revealed last November that US President Barack Obama had sent secret letters to Khamenei in an overture looking for analliance and cooperation in the fight against Islamic State (ISIS) terrorists in Iraq and Syria.

Iran is the largest state sponsor of terrorism, and as Netanyahu noted in his speech, has seized influence in Yemen through the Houthis, Lebanon through Hezbollah, Iraq by taking a lead role in the ISIS fight, and Syria by propping up President Bashar al-Assad militarily.