According to a Sunday CBS News report citing US officials, Iran's Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei is still in hiding in a secret location with extremely limited communication to the outside world. Driven underground by a pervasive fear within Tehran's remaining leadership structure following relentless US and Israeli military strikes, the Supreme Leader is effectively isolated.
This information is nothing 'new' - but even as talks with the US are now little by little reportedly proceeding - and as a ceasefire has been extended by weeks - the Ayatollah is clearly not taking any chances. The CIA and Mossad have openly acknowledged that are actively looking for his hideout. But the report seeks to provide an explanation as to why Tehran's response to any specific updated draft peace deal often takes several days.
CBS detailed how the isolation is to keep Western intelligence from mapping his coordinates, which involves only being reached via a slow, archaic network of physical couriers designed to conceal his location.
The report further alleges that these heightened security measures have significantly disrupted communication lines within Iran's government, complicating active negotiations with the Trump administration and at times dragging responses to US peace proposals to a grinding halt.
But this is also to a large degree by design, to allow the different military units autonomy of command in the instance for more 'decapitation strikes' targeting governing centers in Tehran.
The end result, says CBS, is that "When the U.S. sends proposed details, the difficulty in reaching the supreme leader means there can be a long delay before the U.S. receives a response, two of the officials said."
Yet, it wasn't long ago that White House officials and mainstream pundits were insisting that the Ayatollah is not actually in charge of the country. But now assumptions have shifted back, apparently.
The report claims further:
At this point, most Iranian leaders don't see daylight, spending weeks inside highly fortified bunkers and avoiding speaking to each other unless absolutely necessary, the sources said.
"Watching them try to figure out how to talk to each other is almost like watching a sitcom. They are completely exasperated," one official said.
The most cautious measures are being taken by the supreme leader.
By design, even officials at the highest levels of the Iranian government don't know where he is and have no way to contact him directly.
One official followed with: "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.
It has become obvious that the negotiations process has become painfully slow and confused, and so this narrative by anonymous US officials seems an effort to lay blame squarely on the Iranians, instead of Washington's own often shifting goals and conditions.