Who is really running Iran these days? According to Israel, nothing more than a cardboard cutout — and it may be close to the mark, as the Iranian opposition claims the successor of Iran’s former supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, is in a coma and being treated in secrecy. According to these rumors, Mojtaba Khamenei does not know that his mother, wife, one of his sons, sister, brother-in-law and niece were all killed in the strike that wounded him, nor that he has even been elected supreme leader.

However, a coma and other serious medical conditions did not apparently stop him from issuing his first directive upon being elected: to weaponize the Strait of Hormuz. A statement attributed to him was read on Iranian state TV, but he has not made a public appearance since the attack that took out a large number of his family. The new leader is reportedly in intensive care at Sina University Hospital in Tehran, in a heavily guarded section of the hospital.

While Israel’s foreign ministry posted a photo of a cardboard cutout with the caption, “You can run, you can hide, but cardboard regimes fold,” Iranian state TV read a statement in which Mojtaba supposedly declared that Iran would avenge the “blood of its martyrs.”

“We are not an enemy of the countries around us, and we are only targeting the bases of those Americans,” the statement went on to say. “We send a message to the leaders of the region and emphasise that we are going to have good relations with the countries around us.”

But, the statement added, “The existence of the U.S. bases in [neighboring countries] and usage of those bases to attack Iran is not benefiting the region and they must be closed.”

The statement announced retaliation for the joint U.S.-Israeli strikes against Iran: “A limited amount of this revenge has so far taken concrete form, but until it is fully achieved, this case will remain among our priorities.”

Referring to the losses Mojtaba sustained, the statement said, ‘”I lost my father, I lost my wife. My sister lost her child as well as the husband who has been martyred. But what makes it easier for us to endure all these plights is to trust the grace of God and to know that patience is going to resolve it.”

Mojtaba is believed to be far more dangerous than his father. An exiled official, Jaber Rajabi, with former ties to the new supreme leader, said the hardline cleric is “obsessed with the end of days” and believes “he himself will have a special part in hastening humanity down that path.” He added that the son has as little regard for human life as the father.

“If he can kill 13,000 of his own people, then he has no problem killing 100,000 in Tel Aviv, because if you don’t care about the lives of your own people, why would you care about the lives of others in Tel Aviv?” Rajabi said.