Iran's president got injured during Israeli strikes, confirm US intelligence sources

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian was hurt during last month’s Israeli missile strikes, US intelligence officials have said.

Last week, Iranian state media claimed that President Pezeshkian was attending a Supreme National Security Council meeting when an Israeli strike hit the gathering, injuring him in the leg as he escaped through an emergency shaft.

Two US intelligence officials have told CBS News that the Iranian state media reports are accurate. It is, however, not clear whether Israel targeted Pezeshkian deliberately or not.

Meanwhile, in an interview with Tucker Carlson earlier this month, the Iranian president claimed that Israel tried to assassinate him by bombarding an area where he was holding a meeting.

“It was not the United States that was behind the attempt on my life. It was Israel. I was in a meeting. We were discussing the ways to move forward. But thanks to the intelligence by the spies that they had, they tried to bombard the area…in which we were holding that meeting,” Pezeshkian said.

Videos shared on social media during the 12-day war captured repeated strikes on a mountainside in north-western Tehran.

It has now been revealed that, on the fourth day of the conflict, those strikes targeted a secret underground facility in Tehran that was housing Iran’s top leaders at the time.

While Israel has neither denied nor confirmed the strikes on the national security council meeting, the country has said that it did try to target Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, during the conflict.

Earlier this month, Iran said it has not made any request for talks with the United States, after President Donald Trump said Tehran was seeking negotiations following last month’s war with Israel.

“No request for a meeting has been made on our side to the American side,” said Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei, according to Tasnim news agency.

With inputs from agencies