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In a significant development, Iranian state media announced on Sunday that the son of the late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has been chosen as Iran’s new leader. This decision comes amidst ongoing military pressure from the U.S. and Israel.
Mojtaba Khamenei was selected by a council of 88 clerics following the passing of his father, who led the nation for over thirty years until his death at 86. The U.S. confirmed his demise resulted from an airstrike on February 28.
At 56, Mojtaba is Khamenei’s second son and has been under U.S. sanctions since 2019 due to wielding considerable power despite lacking any official governmental office or election.
According to CNN, the transition of leadership from father to son is generally disapproved of within the Shiite Muslim clerical community, as it resembles the dynastic rule that Iran’s 1979 revolution sought to eliminate.
American officials have stated that diplomatic negotiations with Iran are on hold until military operations reach their intended conclusion. President Trump has issued mixed messages regarding the war’s aim, emphasizing both the desire to remove Iran’s military capabilities and the potential for regime change.
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, end to the country’s ballistic missile program and 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 Mojtaba 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 Mojtaba 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.
Mojtaba serves as “a combination of aide-de-camp, confidant, gatekeeper, and power broker,” UANI wrote. The organization said that Mojtaba’s early years were colored by his father’s revolutionary preaching against the then-ruling Shah of Iran and experienced his father being forced into exile for years.
Mojtaba also watched his father return to a post-revolution Iran in 1979, rise through the political ranks and allow access to education for families of regime elites.
UANI said Mojtaba 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 Khamanei was elected supreme leader in 1989, and UANI writes that Mojtaba 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.