Iran's president declares supreme leader 'completely' healthy, a month after last laying eyes on him.

…(cont) Here's the rest of what I had written. The president said this a month after he'd last laid eyes on the man himself. A month. My nephew, who reads every qualifier like it might be hiding something, asked me a plain question: when's the last time somebody told you a person was fine, and meant they hadn't actually checked in four weeks?

I told him about the garage, because it was the only place I had. My car's been down there three weeks now for the fan belt, and when I call, the fella tells me she's all fixed, running like new. I haven't driven her. I haven't heard her turn over. I have his word on the phone, and a bill coming. My nephew said that's not proof, that's an assertion, and the law knows the difference even when a barstool forgets it.

So I read him the rest of my notes. February 28th, a strike killed the man who held the job before him — Khamenei's father. March 1st, Iran stood up something called an Interim Leadership Council, three names, meant to run the country until the Assembly of Experts picked somebody permanent. I wrote down the word "until" and underlined it twice, because until usually means somebody's supposed to stop being interim eventually.

Then August: state media says the new man met the president back in July, first time anybody'd reported seeing him since he took the job. A video, even — they called it rare. My nephew wanted to know: on a job where showing up in public is supposed to be most of the work, why is rare the word they reached for?

And then September, the sentence I originally called him about. A month since anybody laid eyes on him, and the one word the president reached for wasn't "seen" or "spoken to." It was the word from my first page. My nephew, who bills in six-minute increments, wanted to know: when does a lawyer reach for a word like that, if the plain truth already covers it?

I told him I'd let it go, I really was closing the notebook —

One more thing, before I put this away. That council from March, the interim one, built to run things until somebody permanent was picked. Nothing I've read tells me it was ever formally stood down. Was it? I don't have that page. Nobody's handed me that page.

So here's what's actually in the notebook, and it's all I've got: a father killed in February, a council installed in March to cover the gap, a leader nobody saw until a rare video in July, and a president in September reaching, a month after he'd actually looked at the man, for the word completely.