What to know about Mojtaba Khamenei, Iran's next supreme leader
LONDON -- Mojtaba Khamenei, the second-eldest son of assassinated Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has been chosen by the country's Assembly of Experts to succeed his father, Iranian state media reported Sunday.
His appointment comes as the Islamic Republic faces an existential war against a combined U.S.-Israeli front seemingly intent on regime change.
Mojtaba, 56, has long been viewed by analysts as a possible successor to Khamenei, who was killed last Saturday by a series of airstrikes in Tehran in the opening salvos of the U.S.-Israeli campaign.
The Israel Defense Forces said on Sunday that any new leader -- and any member of the assembly who chose that leader -- would become a fair target in their campaign against Iran. President Donald Trump said on Sunday that the new leader "is not going to last long" if the Iranians don't get his approval first.
As the U.S.-Israeli operation began, Khamenei's family was alongside the supreme leader at the heart of power. Iranian state media said Khamenei's wife, Mojtaba's wife and one of Mojtaba's sons were also killed in the strikes on the supreme leader's office. It was unclear from reports whether Mojtaba had been present.
Analysts have noted Mojtaba's lack of adequate religious credentials and hesitance within the regime to oversee a dynastic succession as marks against his candidacy to be the next supreme leader. But he was nonetheless long considered among the frontrunners.
The 88-member Assembly of Experts began a selection process to choose a new leader despite the persistent threat of U.S.-Israeli attacks. On Tuesday, Israeli warplanes bombed the Assembly building in the city of Qom.
The process of selecting Iran's next supreme leader was on Thursday entering the final stages, a member of the Assembly of Experts, Ayatollah Mohsen Qomi, told Mehr News, Iran's semiofficial news agency.
Analysts have broadly characterized Mojtaba as a powerful figure with limited public and international profiles, operating somewhat behind the scenes but enjoying major influence.
Born in the northeastern city of Mashhad in 1969 -- 10 years before the Islamic Revolution that brought Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Khamanei's predecessor, to power -- Mojtaba went on to serve in the military during the devastating Iran-Iraq war, as a member of the elite Habib ibn Mazahir al-Asadi Battalion.
The 1980-to-1988 conflict pitted the young Islamic Republic against Saddam Hussein's Iraq. It is regularly cited by experts as a key influence on the character and development of the new regime in Iran, helping embed its particular fusion of clerical supremacy and authoritarian nationalism.
The war also served as a springboard for battlefield heroes to achieve future political power, partially through entrenching and expanding the role of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps -- IRGC -- in the running of the country. Members of Mojtaba's battalion were among them.
Vali Nasr, a professor at Johns Hopkins University, tipped Mojtaba as a significant center of power in a post-Khamenei Islamic Republic in his recent book "Iran's Grand Strategy." Both his family ties and military service lent him political weight and vital connections with the IRGC and other parts of the country's powerful security establishment, Nasr suggested.
In 1999, Mojtaba moved to the holy city of Qom, south of Tehran, where he became a cleric and a religious teacher. There, Suzanne Maloney, of the Brookings Institution think tank wrote last month, "Mojtaba studied under the extremist hard-line cleric Ayatollah Taqi Mesbah Yazdi."
After Qom, Mojtaba returned to Tehran to take up a role at the Office of the Supreme Leader, according to a 2023 Chatham House think tank report by Saeid Golkar and Kasra Aarabi. "Over time, Khamenei, the elder, would train his son to lead his office," they wrote.
The supreme leader's son took an active role in politics, too, working with former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on the latter's 2005 and 2009 presidential campaigns.
The 2009 contest prompted mass anti-government protests, with demonstrators citing reported electoral irregularities and alleging vote rigging. The protests were crushed by the security forces. Mojtaba, analysts and observers said, was a key figure shaping the crackdown.
"Since then, with his father's full backing, Mojtaba has emerged as the man behind the curtain controlling the Office of the Supreme Leader, with heavy involvement in decision-making across the Islamic Republic," Golkar and Aarabi wrote.
Western media reports also suggested the Mojtaba had used his position to amass enormous wealth, with some estimates suggesting a financial empire worth billions of dollars.
Mojtaba's hardline reputation could align well with a more militarized Iranian state under threat from foreign nations, Maloney wrote last month.
He "wields significant influence behind the scenes through his extensive ties with security forces and the IRGC. The recent uprising and intensifying U.S. military presence in the region have reportedly strengthened Mojtaba's hand," Maloney wrote.
