IRAN has named Mojtaba Khamenei as its new Supreme Leader, just over a week after the assassination of his father, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in United States-Israeli strikes that plunged the entire region into a sprawling war.
Khamenei, who will now be charged with leading the Islamic Republic through the biggest crisis in its 47-year history, was named by clerics as his father’s successor on Sunday.
Mojtaba Khamenei has never run for office or been subjected to a public vote, but has for decades been a highly influential figure in the inner circle of the supreme leader, cultivating deep ties to the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
In recent years, he has increasingly been touted as a top potential replacement for his father.
His selection could be a sign that more hardline factions in Iran’s establishment retain power, and could indicate that the government has little desire to agree to a deal or negotiations in the short term as the war is in its second week.
The 88-member Assembly of Experts that is authorised to choose the country’s supreme leader had earlier indicated it had reached a majority consensus on its choice, without naming who it was, with one member saying, “the path of Imam Khomeini and the path of the martyr Imam Khamenei has been chosen. The name of Khamenei will continue.”
Ali Khamenei, who ruled Iran for 37 years, succeeding Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini who led the 1979 revolution, was killed in a United States-Israeli strike on Tehran on February 28, at the outset of the war which has now unleashed chaos throughout the Middle East.
On Thursday, News Point Nigeria reported that Mojtaba is among the leading contenders to succeed his father as the new head of the country.
Contenders for the top position included Alireza Arafi, one of the three members of the interim council running the country, hardliner Mohsen Araki, and even Hassan Khomeini, the grandson of the founder of the country in 1979.
Mojtaba Khamenei, 56, would represent a hereditary transition that his father rejected as an idea in 2024.
Iran put an end to a multi-century royal dynasty headed by the shah.
Born on September 8, 1969, in the holy city of Mashhad in eastern Iran, Mojtaba Khamenei is one of the late supreme leader’s six children.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei died aged 86 on Saturday in Tehran, in one of the opening US-Israeli missile strikes of the war.
Because of his discretion at official ceremonies and in the media, Mojtaba’s true influence has been the subject of intense speculation for years among the Iranian population as well as in diplomatic circles.
He is the only child of the former supreme leader to hold a public position despite having no official post.
He is regarded as close to conservatives, notably because of his ties with the Revolutionary Guards, the ideological army of the country.
This relationship dates back to his service in a combat unit at the end of the war between Iraq and Iran from 1980-1988.
The US Treasury Department imposed sanctions on Mojtaba Khamenei in 2019 during President Donald Trump’s first term, stating that the Iranian represented the supreme leader “despite never being elected or appointed to a government position aside from work in the office of his father”.
Ali Khamenei had “delegated a part of his leadership responsibilities” to his son “who worked closely” with Iranian security forces “to advance his father’s destabilising regional ambitions and oppressive domestic objectives,” it said.
Opponents have notably accused him of playing a role in the violent crackdown that followed the re-election of ultra-conservative president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2009, which triggered a vast protest movement.
According to an investigation by the Bloomberg news organisation, which cited anonymous sources and Western intelligence agency reports, Mojtaba Khamenei has amassed wealth estimated at more than $100 million.
Money from oil sales had been channelled into investments in luxury British real estate, hotels in Europe, and property in Dubai through shell companies in tax havens, according to the article.
On the religious front, he studied theology in the holy city of Qom, south of Tehran, where he also taught.
He attained the rank of Hujjat al-Islam, a title given to mid-ranking clerics, below that of Ayatollah, held by his father and revolutionary founder Ruhollah Khomeini.
His wife, Zahra Haddad-Adel, daughter of a former speaker of parliament, also died in the US-Israeli strikes that killed the supreme leader, according to Iranian authorities.
See the link below to an earlier report by News Point Nigeria tipping Mojtaba as a possible successor to Khamenei:
Iran Supreme Leader’s Son Mojtaba Khamenei Tipped To Succeed Father As Israel Threatens Elimination