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In a significant political development, Mojtaba Khamenei has been chosen as Iran’s new leader by a council of 88 Iranian clerics, as confirmed by state media on Sunday. This decision comes amidst ongoing military tensions, with the United States and Israel launching strikes against the nation.
The election of Mojtaba follows the recent death of his father, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who led Iran for over three decades. The United States has acknowledged its responsibility for the airstrike that killed the 86-year-old Supreme Leader on February 28.
Mojtaba Khamenei, aged 56, is the second son of the late Ayatollah. He was previously sanctioned by the U.S. in 2019 due to his significant influence in governance, despite lacking any formal governmental position or election.
According to CNN, this father-to-son transfer of power is controversial within the Shiite Muslim clerical community, as it bears a resemblance to the monarchical system overthrown during Iran’s 1979 revolution.
U.S. officials have stated that they will not engage in diplomatic negotiations with Iran until their current military operations are concluded. President Trump has issued mixed messages regarding the conflict’s objectives and duration, suggesting a desire for regime change while emphasizing the need to neutralize Iran’s military capabilities.
Trump has also signaled he’d be willing to keep the regime in place if an official emerged who would accede to U.S. demands. Some of these include no enrichment of uranium that can be used for a nuclear weapon, an end to the country’s ballistic missile program and an end to terrorist proxies.
In Iran’s system of government, the supreme leader is the most powerful political official. His constitutional authority extends over the judiciary, the regular armed forces, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and state-controlled media.
But it’s not clear the current relationship between Khamenei and Ali Larijani, the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council. Larijani in recent weeks was granted extraordinary freedom to run the country, The New York Times reported, as the threat of U.S. and Israeli strikes loomed.
The Treasury Department said Khamenei worked closely with the IRGC and the Basij Resistance Force, a volunteer militia, to advance “his father’s destabilizing regional ambitions and oppressive domestic objectives.”
The IRGC is the military force tasked with protecting the supreme leader. Iran’s clerical system is responsible for exporting the Islamic Revolution outside Iran’s borders, supporting terrorist proxy groups and carrying out attacks around the world.
The IRGC and Basij forces are also implicated in the violent crackdown on protesters, most recently the killing of approximately 7,000 people during popular protests between December and January.
“Mojtaba Khamenei has emerged as an enigmatic but powerful figure in the Iranian system,” United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI), a nonprofit and nonpartisan policy organization, wrote in an assessment.
Khamenei serves as “a combination of aide-de-camp, confidant, gatekeeper, and power broker,” UANI wrote. The organization said his early years were colored by his father’s revolutionary preaching against the then-ruling shah of Iran, and he experienced his father being forced into exile for years.
Khamenei also watched his father return to a postrevolution Iran in 1979, rise through the political ranks and allow access to education for families of regime elites.
UANI said Khamenei served during the Iran-Iraq War in the Habib battalion, and that facilitated relationships with people who would go on to be leading figures in the IRGC.
Ali Khamenei was elected supreme leader in 1989, and UANI writes that his son gained station and influence over his father’s more than three-decade tenure.
“Mojtaba, who is married to the daughter of former Speaker of Parliament Gholam Ali Haddad-Adel, is the most powerful of Iran’s supreme leader’s sons,” UANI wrote.