‘Iran’s supreme leader is in good health’

The supreme leader of Iran Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is in very good health and everything is normal, an Iranian insider said Saturday during an exclusive interview with CCTV. “I know people who have met him during the past two or three days and they say he is completely healthy and everything is normal,” said Seyed Mohammad Marandi, dean of the Faculty of World Studies at the University of Tehran, referring to his father Dr. Ali Reza Marandi, head of Khamenei’s medical team, as the “people.” The interview came after a recent Israeli media report said Khamenei was hospitalized for an emergency on February 4 because of cancer spread and that he was in critical condition. The Iranian government, on September 8, 2014, declared that Khamenei would receive an operation by a team headed by Dr. Ali Reza Marandi. Interviewed soon after the operation, Marandi said Khamenei’s prostate operation was very successful. “The operation that he had a few months ago was a very routine operation. He carries about his work very normally. His business is as usual, work as usual,” said Seyed Mohammad Marandi. “Khamenei has his regular meetings throughout the week. He has classes in the morning. He teaches as a professor. He has early morning classes three days a week. And he also goes mountain climbing regularly,” he said. On October 10, 2014, Khamenei’s official Twitter released a photo of the supreme leader climbing a mountain at dawn for the first time after his operation. Marandi also said Khamenei keeps a good diet, and that his physical condition is much better than people of the same age, claiming that Israeli and some western media have “special purposes” for spreading news about Khamenei’s health. “On numerous occasions, they have said he is ill and they’ve taken him to the hospital, and it wasn’t true. And the only time he went to the hospital, they didn’t know about it. Iran declared it. So it’s obvious that they do not have any inside information. Probably a part of the campaign against Iran is to create uncertainty,” he said. Khamenei will make a public appearance in the coming days, he said. On Saturday, Khamenei’s official website announced that he would meet Iranian environmentalists on Sunday.