With the nation watching, the host on Iranian state television asked the question that so many people in Iran — from the political elite to people on the street — were wondering.

“People are very worried about the supreme leader,” the host said to an official from Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s office on Tuesday. “Can you tell us how he is?”

He noted that viewers had sent a flood of messages asking the same thing. But the official, Mehdi Fazaeli, the head of Mr. Khamenei’s archives office, did not give a straight answer.

Instead, Mr. Fazaeli said that he, too, had received numerous inquiries from officials and others worried about the ayatollah after the furious bombing campaign by Israel and the United States.

“We should all be praying,” Mr. Fazaeli said.

“The people who are responsible for protecting the supreme leader are doing their job well,” he added. “God willing, our people can celebrate victory next to their leader, God willing.”

,..Sanam Vakil, the director for the Middle East and North Africa at Chatham House, a research group, said that Mr. Khamenei’s absence was notable and a sign that Iran’s leaders were being “extremely careful and security-minded.”

“If we don’t see Khamenei by Ashura,” an important religious procession for Shiite Muslims observed in Iran in early July this year, Ms. Vakil said, “that is a bad sign. He has to show his face.”

New York Times