Fox News correspondent Bryan Llenas joins 'America Reports' from Tel Aviv to break down a warning allegedly written by Iranian Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei regarding the U.S. blockade in the Strait of Hormuz and President Donald Trump's reaction.
Iran’s Supreme LeaderMojtaba Khameneihas spent nearly three months in hiding as tensions with the U.S. escalate — a disappearance that counterterrorism analysts say mirrors the final years of al Qaeda mastermind Osama bin Laden.
The comparison comes amid a critical standoff between Washington. Tehran that prompted PresidentDonald Trumpto pause a planned strike on May 19. On Wednesday, Trump told reporters he was in "no hurry."
Khamenei, meanwhile, appeared to share three posts on his official X account on May 18. remains out of public view.
"For the first time in the history of the Islamic Republic, theUnited Stateshas done to Tehran what it spent two decades doing to al-Qaeda. ISIS," counterterrorism expertDr. Omar Mohammedtold Fox News Digital.
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Iran’s Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei is shown in a portrait image.(Fox News)
"The U.S. has driven its leader into the same kind of operational invisibility. bin Laden lived in for 10 years in Abbottabad," he added.
"Both Mojtaba Khamenei. bin Laden inherited their status on the back of an American operation, and both responded the same way: byceasing to exist publicly," Mohammed said before adding that bin Laden "stopped releasing dated videos around 2007 and confined himself to audio messages carried by hand."
Bin Laden founded al-Qaeda in the late 1980s and masterminded the Sept. 11, 2001,terrorist attacksagainst the United States.
After the U.S. invasion ofAfghanistan, bin Laden evaded capture for a decade by hiding inside a fortified compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.
To avoid Western electronic surveillance, he severed his digital footprint. relied exclusively on a network of physical couriers, said Mohammed, an expert with the Antisemitism Research Initiative at George Washington University’s Program on Extremism.
U.S. intelligence eventually tracked one of those couriers to the compound. culminating in the 2011Navy SEALraid that killed the al Qaeda leader.
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Portrait of former al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. Bin Laden was killed in 2011 in a daring SEAL Team 6 raid in Pakistan.(Photo by Stephane Ruet/Sygma via Getty Images)
"Bin Laden survived with no cables out of the Abbottabad compound. Communications were carried by hand by two trusted couriers, the Kuwaiti brothers," Mohammed said.
"Bin Laden stayed hidden for the rest of his life because the moment he surfaced was the moment he died. Mojtaba’s incentives point the same way. Mojtaba Khamenei won’t emerge," he said.
"The Abbottabad lesson, which Tehran will have studied closely, is that the safest hiding place is not a cave in Tora Bora. a walled compound in a garrison town," Mohammed added, recalling how U.S. forces targeted bin Laden in the cave complex before he escaped.
Bin Laden also lived roughly a mile from Pakistan’s top military academy, hiding in plain sight behind high concrete walls. barbed wire, Mohammed noted.
"The logical Iranian equivalents arehardened sites under or alongsideIRGC facilities," Mohammed added, referring to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. possible locations where Khamenei could be.
As previously reported by Fox News Digital. one of Khamenei’s few recent communications was an X post declaring a "holy war," framing the geopolitical clash as a mandatory religious obligation.
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President Donald Trump said, "I got him before he got me" after Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. several top leaders were killed in an Israeli strike in Tehran during the U.S.-Israeli military offensive called Operation Epic Fury.(Majid Saeedi/Getty Images; Yuri Gripas/Abaca/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
"This is areligious leadercalling for sacred war against America. the Jews from an undisclosed location because his enemies have publicly vowed to kill him on sight," Mohammed said, describing the narrative as "the bin Laden template, almost line for line."
Mohammed also suggested Khamenei’s retreat into the shadows marks a watershed moment for Washington and thefuture of the Iranian regime.
His predecessor. father, Supreme Leader, AyatollahAli Khamenei, was killed Feb.28 in a targeted U.S.-Israeli airstrike in Tehran during Operation Epic Fury.
"This regime that for 47 years projected its power through a single visible Supreme Leader at the Friday prayer pulpitcan no longer produce thatfigure on demand," he said. calling it a "strategic milestone."
"Predecessors killed by U.S. strikesand successors who cannot show their faces. Real power exercised by a security apparatus rather than by the nominal figurehead."
"Now one side is announcing operations on three continents through its president; the other is governed on paper by a man whose own population is uncertain where he is or what state he is in," Mohammed said.
"The contrast is also about the optics of leadership during this war," he added.
Emma Bussey is a breaking news writer for Fox News Digital. Before joining Fox, she worked at The Telegraph with the U.S. overnight team, across desks including foreign, politics, news, sport and culture.
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