Saturday, March 7, 2026
<![CDATA[Ayatollah Ali Khamenei]]><![CDATA[Donald Trump]]><![CDATA[Iran]]><![CDATA[Israel]]>Featured

Iran’s Got a ‘Who’s Zoomin’ Who’ Problem – HotAir

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March 7, 2026
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What was written after a taped phone call with Aretha Franklin in 1985 about how the Queen of Soul used to work the room with other ‘players’ at nightclubs for a little naughty fun has turned into the big question facing both rapidly-dwindling leadership in Iran, as well as U.S. and Israeli military commanders. Who’s Zoomin’ Who? Who’s in charge? Where’s Ayatollah Waldo? 

There were a lot of priorities facing the planners at the Pentagon with the onset of Operation Epic Fury – defeating any remaining air defenses, removing Iranian naval and air assets, destroying ballistic missile stockpiles, and, more importantly, their mobile and stationary launchers. All of these issues had to be, and largely have been, addressed over the last week to great success. But among the highest of objectives was to eliminate Iran’s command and control capabilities. It’s quite telling, in fact, that there’s no proof of life of someone actually in charge of the degrading terror state besides a picture of one of the former Supreme Leader’s sons and the message, ‘Trust us, another weekend is upon us and Ayatollah Bernie is just fine, but he’s a bit hoarse from all the great things happening and can’t come out and talk right now.’  

Literally within minutes of President Donald Trump giving the go command last Friday, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was dead. Forty-plus of his lieutenants, his oldest son, his daughter-in-law, and his grandchildren were dead. For the next 48 hours, death and destruction to IRGC and Basij forces and facilities rained down all over Iran, and by Sunday on ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, known lovingly as Tehran Tim, said this. 





Of course, less than 24 hours later, this was all that was left of the 80-plus cleric Assembly of Experts.

Mojtaba Khamenei, number two on Ali Khamenei’s personal progeny depth chart, was believed to be wounded in the initial wave of strikes. It is not known how severely injured, if not terminally, Little Khameneito is. There’s been no official word, no video evidence, no picture taken with a newspaper with a current date to make an assessment of if the Ayatollahship of Junior is really a thing or not. Needless to say, I have my doubts. And if he is alive and in charge, the ‘of what’ he is allegedly in charge seems to be shrinking in potency by the minute. Perhaps Mojtaba is the right man for the job, in retrospect. 

Here’s the missile launch count by the day from Iran since the war finally came to them in a real and personal way last Friday. 

The average response time between a launcher lighting up and it being identified and removed from the chessboard permanently via return ordinance? About four minutes. That’s better than First Responders in Chicago any day of the week. 

By Wednesday, Amit Segal of N12 News in Israel reported another Iranian VIP was targeted and removed from the game with a life-ending injury – Rahman Mokadam, the commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps’ special operation division. 





In case you don’t understand how big a deal this is, he’s the peaceful fellow who planned and oversaw what thankfully was a thwarted attempt to assassinate Donald Trump on the eve of the election in 2024. 

On Thursday afternoon at a CentCom briefing with Admiral Brad Cooper, Department of War Secretary Pete Hegseth promised that as much as has been doled out thus far, which is a whole bunch, more would be coming very soon. That began early Friday morning. 

It wasn’t just that Ali Khamenei had a secure living complex and office above ground in Tehran. He did. Fortified, staffed with lots of elite forces, and yet it still didn’t matter. He was rendered an ex-mullah before his security detail could get him to the secret bunker underneath the compound. “If only,” the mythical IRGC praetorian guard would say. If only they could have gotten him to the elevator, they would be okay.

From what we know about the underground bunker complex from public sources, it consisted of a lot of things you’d want in a bunker. It was massive, it was fortified, and it was deep. So deep that the Indian Express reported the elevator ride down to it from the surface took five minutes. Now it is Iran we’re talking about, and they might have been using more Chinese technology and materials, so the elevator probably was a lot slower than what you’d find in a modern skyscraper. 

The actual depth isn’t as important as the perception of impregnability it gave the Ayatollah and his lunatic Shiite henchmen. From the underground lair, with what they believed was a state-of-the-art command center, full control over regime personnel and weaponry could still be centralized by the only person in the country with any real power. To the Iranians, so long as this bunker was operational with someone in charge in it, the Americans and Israelis would ultimately fail. 





Before Friday’s main event, the good news about how the war was proceeding was tempered by ominous overtones. First, the ChiComs were reportedly working on plans to supply Iran with parts and a pathway to export oil safely through the Straits of Hormuz. No clue how or if that’s going to happen, but if the replacement Chinese parts work as well as the parts in the 50 hypersonic missiles they already sent, which had a 100% fail rate, and their near-universal fatality rate in drones and missile defense systems, that doesn’t concern me so much. 

The Russians, however, after sitting on the sidelines the first few days and fretting that they had lost contact with whoever had control of the fissile material Iran swears it didn’t have before admitting they do, did make contact with someone purportedly running the country, and they had intended to offer help. Bad news, right? Maybe not.  

Back in June of last year, when Donald Trump approved Operation Midnight Hammer, the bat signal went out to Whiteman Air Force Base, and a few hours later, a cauldron of B-2’s delivered the mail to the Fordow nuclear weapons facility. That underground compound was deep within a mountain and under concrete. It was also believed to be impregnable, with only our GBU-57 Bunker Busters theoretically being able to do the job. So we used 12 of them, one on top of the last, as a jackhammer of death and destruction. Lots of people around the world went to school on that, including the Israelis. 

For this underground complex below the rubble that used to be Khamenei’s palace, 50 warplanes were used carrying not one, not twelve, but 100 pieces of ordinance that were dropped, but only after an Israeli Blue Sparrow, a quasi-ballistic missile, led the way with the initial punch strike. You bounce the rubble enough in the same spot with repeated precision weapons, and it turns out nothing is truly deep enough. 





What did it look like at street level? Apocalyptic. 

So the big question, naturally, is who, pray tell, might have been in the bunker when the walls and ceiling caved in and turned it into an inferno? It took a few hours, but now, we know at least one occupant. 

Hajazi was, quite simply, in the top five of the most powerful people in the regime. There was no one Khamenei trusted more, and his portfolio included serving as the Ayatollah’s gatekeeper, enforcer, political and security chief, and coordinator for all of the tentacles of the regime’s octopus. In short, if this guy were in the command bunker, he was running the country this week, not Khamenei’s son. If the Russians were talking to anyone about coordination, aid, and possible assistance, they would have been talking to this guy. No more. 

The good news for Iran is that they do not have to conduct a burial service for him. His hole was dug long ago, and the Israelis just filled it in. 

Donald Trump repeated his Corleone-esque offer for a deal: Nothing. Total surrender is the opening bid for negotiations, if there’s anyone left to negotiate. If not, if the remnants of a failed theocracy are thirsty for more, the President is more than willing to oblige them. 





By the way, remember the bit a while ago about how the ChiComs were working on a plan to render assistance, albeit very late for it to do much good? 

Yeah, well, those plans just got more complicated, being that the airport’s on fire, and the only boats with guns and lasers on them in the Gulf are American.

As we turn the calendar to the second week of the battle to end the regime as we know it, we have now entered Phase II. Phase II is expected to last a couple of weeks. Secretary Hegseth promised Thursday at Centcom that operations, now that air supremacy has been established and Iranian military resistance is degrading by the hour, would only ramp up. 

To give you a sense of what Phase II might look like, perhaps it’s best to observe what Phase II is inheriting after a very successful Phase I bows out with an absolute banger.

Until yesterday, whatever was in the middle of this inferno was the headquarters of the IRGC. Currently, it looks like one of Dante’s circles of Hell. 

And speaking of Dante’s circles, just to leave you on a happy note going into the weekend, that the Democrats have sailed past fecklessness into the sea of irrelevance. Here’s former President Joe Biden, yes, the guy who made these Iranian phases necessary, at the memorial service for Jesse Jackson. 





I must confess, I did not have Joe Biden as the Temu Gavin Newsom on my Bingo card. 

Godspeed, Warriors. Say hello to the coming third carrier group in the region, the George H.W. Bush, arriving in a couple of weeks. Perhaps that’s the onset of Phase III. 

And to all the remaining pre-dead Iranian commanders, it appears you cannot meet in person, you cannot use your phones or pagers, Zooming is immediately followed by booming, and you’re being tracked both above ground and below…at least until you’re at final resting temperature. Reports are that an increasing number of regular army, Basij, and IRGC forces are having a bit of the blue flu of late. They’re too well off to come into work. It seems their will to fight has soured once everything and everyone supporting them in the field is being blown up. Your robe is a lovely shade of white. It wouldn’t take too terribly much effort to cut a clean square off it and tie it to a big stick and wave it around for a while with your arms up. 

You shouldn’t have too much trouble finding sticks, either. Just go visit your former office.


Editor’s Note: For decades, former presidents have been all talk and no action. Now, Donald Trump is eliminating the threat from Iran once and for all.

Help us report the truth about the Trump administration’s decisive actions to keep Americans safe and bring peace to the world. Join Hot Air VIP and use promo code FIGHT to get 60% off your membership!





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