Mojtaba Khamenei, the son of late Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei, has been appointed to succeed his father as the new head of the nation.
The younger Khamenei was named supreme leader by the top clerical body, the Assembly of Experts, in a statement published shortly after midnight on Monday in Iran.
The 56-year-old mid-ranking cleric has survived the US-Israeli air war on Iran. His 86-year-old father, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was martyred in an airstrike by US-Israel last week.
A member of the council, Ayatollah Mohsen Heidari Alekasir, said in a video on Sunday that a candidate had been selected based on Khamenei’s guidance that Iran’s top leader should be “hated by the enemy”.
“Even the Great Satan (US) has mentioned his name,” Heidari Alekasir said of the chosen successor, days after US President Donald Trump said Mojtaba was an “unacceptable” choice for him.
Other contenders for the top position had included Alireza Arafi, one of the three members of the interim council running the country, Mohsen Araki, and even Hassan Khomeini, the grandson of the founder of the Islamic republic — Ruhollah Khomeini — in 1979.
‘Gatekeeper’
Mojtaba amassed power under his father as a senior figure close to the security forces and the vast business empire they control. He has opposed reformers seeking to engage with the West as it tries to curb Iran’s nuclear programme.
His close ties with the elite Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) give him added leverage across Iran’s political and security apparatus and he has built up influence behind the scenes as his father’s “gatekeeper”, sources familiar with the matter said.
“He has strong constituency and support within the IRGC, in particular amongst the younger […] generations,” said Kasra Aarabi, head of researching the IRGC at United Against Nuclear Iran, a US-based policy organisation.
The supreme leader has the final say on matters of state, including foreign policy and Iran’s nuclear programme. Western powers want to prevent Tehran developing nuclear arms. Iran says its nuclear programme is for civilian purposes only.
Mojtaba could face opposition from Iranians who have shown they are ready to stage mass protests to press their demands for greater freedoms despite resistance from authorities.
He was born in 1969 in the holy city of Mashhad and grew up as his father was helping lead the opposition to the Shah. As a young man, he served in the Iran-Iraq war.
Mojtaba studied under religious conservatives in the seminaries of Qom, Iran’s center of theological learning, and has the clerical rank of Hojjatoleslam.
He has never held a formal position in the Islamic Republic’s government. He has appeared at loyalist rallies, but has rarely spoken in public.
He is regarded as close to conservatives, notably because of his ties with the Revolutionary Guards, the ideological arm of Iran’s military. That relationship dates back to his service in a combat unit at the end of the war between Iraq and Iran that lasted from 1980 to 1988.
US sanctions
The US Treasury Department imposed sanctions on Mojtaba in 2019, saying he represented the supreme leader in “an official capacity despite never being elected or appointed to a government position” aside from working in his father’s office.
Its website said Khamenei had previously delegated some of his responsibilities to Mojtaba, who it said had worked closely with the commander of the IRGC’s Quds Force and the Basij, a religious organisation affiliated with the Guards, “to advance his father’s destabilising regional ambitions and oppressive domestic objectives”.
Mojtaba bears a strong resemblance to his father, and wears the black turban of a sayyed.
His wife, Zahra Haddad-Adel, daughter of a former speaker of parliament, was also martyred in the US-Israeli strikes that martyred the supreme leader.
Israel has issued a stark warning to the new supreme leader and whoever selected him, saying “the hand of the State of Israel will continue to follow any successor and anyone who seeks to appoint a successor”.
The Assembly of Experts has 88 members who are elected every eight years.
It has only overseen one leadership transition process to date, when Khamenei was selected in 1989 following the death of Khomeini.
