Was Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei Declared Most Powerful Man by Forbes? No!

The April-May Forbes magazine cover features American investor Todd Boehly and not Khamenei.

Fact-Check: Khamenei did not feature on the cover. The image is fabricated.

(Source: Altered by The Quint) 

An image showing Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, allegedly on the cover of Forbes magazine's April issue is being shared on social media platforms. The cover purportedly deemed Khamenei as the 'most powerful man.'

An archive of the post can be found here. 

(Source: X/Screenshot) 

This post recorded 43.9K views at the time of writing this story.

(Archives of similar claims can be found here and here.)

Is this true?: The image is fabricated, hence, the claim is false.

• The April issue of the magazine featured American investor and businessman Todd Boehly.

How did we find out?: We ran a Google reverse image search on the image and did not find any credible sources that would verify it.

• Following this we checked the Forbes magazine website to see if Khamenei had been named as the most powerful man.

• We found the April-May issue, which featured American investor and businessman Todd Boehly on the cover.

Here are the covers of Forbes magazines. 

(Source: Forbes/Screenshot) 

• The cover came out on 1 April and featured Boehly. Forbes described Boehly's business empire's strategy as using the money earned from his unexciting yet reliable annuities business to establish a sports and entertainment empire worth billions of dollars.

Here is a copy of the cover. 

(Source: Forbes/Screenshot) 

• We also looked for the source of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's photo by running a Google reverse image search.

• We came across the image on Khamenei's official website from 21 October 2015. It was featured in a letter written by the supreme leader to President Hassan Rouhani of the Supreme National Security Council (SNSC).

Here is a copy of the letter. 

(Source: The Office of the Supreme Leader/Screenshot) 

• We also searched to see if Khamenei had ever been on the cover of Forbes. While we could not find him on the cover of the magazine, the search results revealed that he was on the 2015 and 2018 lists of the world's most powerful people.

Here is a screenshot from the Forbes website. 

(Source: Forbes/Screenshot) 

Conclusion: It is clear that Khamenei was not featured on the cover of Forbes magazine.

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