ERBIL, Kurdistan Region of Iraq – Mojtaba Khamenei, son of the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was elected as Iran’s new Supreme Leader after a unanimous vote by the country’s Assembly of Experts late Sunday.
Ali Khamenei, Iran’s long-ruling Supreme Leader, was killed in an American-Israeli strike on his compound in Tehran on February 28.
“Ayatollah Mojtaba Hosseini Khamenei has been appointed and introduced as the third leader of the sacred system of the Islamic Republic of Iran,” the assembly said.
Mojtaba Khamenei, born 1969, is a mid-level cleric with the Hojjatoleslam title. He briefly served in the Iraq-Iran war as a young man, but has never held public office, despite working closely with his father.
He is believed to hold even more hardline and anti-reformist views than his father, and has for years been deeply tied to Iran’s security apparatus.
Mojtaba reportedly played a key role in the violent suppression of the protests following the disputed 2009 elections.
The US Treasury has sanctioned Mojtaba since 2019 for “representing the Supreme Leader in an official capacity despite never being elected or appointed to a government position aside from work in the office of his father.”
The Treasury accused Mojtaba of working closely with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the Basij, “to advance his father’s destabilizing regional ambitions and oppressive domestic objectives.”
As Supreme Leader, Mojtaba will have the final decision on matters such as the nuclear program and the country’s foreign policy.
Mojtaba was reportedly targeted in the US-Israeli airstrikes, with Israeli media claiming he was wounded in the attack, citing security sources.
The attack on the Khamenei compound killed several members of the family, including Mojtaba’s wife, Zahra Haddad Adel.
In an exclusive interview with Axios on Thursday, Trump said “they are wasting their time. Khamenei’s son is a lightweight. I have to be involved in the appointment, like with Delcy [Rodriguez] in Venezuela.”
The US and Israel in late February launched a large-scale military offensive across Iran.
Tehran has responded to the attacks by launching missiles and drones toward US interests across the region, killing at least six US personnel, while also causing heavy material damage and additional casualties in the countries hosting the bases.
