Hamidreza Naghashian (Naqqashian) said in an interview that Khomeini was admitted to hospital with a heart problem, but later it was found that his stomach had upper gastrointestinal bleeding.

Naghashian claimed that medications to treat Khomeini were bought through several connections from a pharmacy in London, which had not existed before and was only established for providing Khomeini’s drugs and immediately shuted down afterwards.

He did not elaborate on who had prescribed the medicines and who had provided them, but said the intelligence ministry has the script of the buyers’ interrogation, adding that former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani did not allow the ministry to follow up the case.

The former bodyguard also called on the authorities to increase measures to protect the current Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei because of the suspected infiltration in his office.

Since mid-2020 a series of high-profile mysterious attacks have hit Iran’s nuclear and military installations around the country, widely believed to have been Israeli sabotage operations.

In May, several IRGC officials were killed or died in suspicious circumstances, prompting Tehran to blame Israel - which has never officially taken credit for these operations – and a major reshuffling of IRGC intelligence and counter-intelligence leadership in the following month.