Mojtaba Khamenei, Son Of Slain Ayatollah, Named Iran’s Supreme Leader

Iran has named Mojtaba Khamenei, the son of the former Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, as its supreme leader — a move that suggests a push for stability as the Islamic Republic navigates the most significant threat to its survival in its nearly 50 years.

Iranian state media on Sunday announced Mojtaba Khamenei as the pick to lead Iran, just over a week after his father’s death in U.S.-Israeli strikes that also killed dozens of top figures in the regime.

The 56-year-old Shia cleric had long been seen as one of a number of potential successors to Ali Khamenei, despite never having held government office. Even so, he wielded behind-the-scenes influence in the country’s governing apparatus when his father was alive.

Indeed, the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control issued sanctions against Khamenei in 2019 “for representing the Supreme Leader in an official capacity despite never being elected or appointed to a government position.”

According to OFAC at the time, Khamenei “worked closely” with both the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force, which oversees Iran’s coordination with regional militant groups, and its volunteer paramilitary Basij force, which is deployed against Iranian citizens to violently suppress protests and uprisings.

It’s unclear how the joint U.S.-Israel military operations will affect the authority of the position or the safety of the person holding it — especially as President Donald Trump seeks to select a leader whom he hopes will work with his administration moving forward. Trump told POLITICO last week that he hoped to have a “big impact” on the choice of Iran’s next leader to avoid someone “that’s going to lead to having to do this again in another 10 years.”

As for the younger Khamenei, who at the time had emerged as a likely front-runner, Trump bashed him as “incompetent.”

Khamenei’s rise could prove to be a controversial one within Iran itself. Iran experts have long downplayed the likelihood of his selection. Pointing to the fundamental anti-monarchy principles of the Islamic Revolution, analysts have predicted that regime supporters would be averse to anything that looked like a monarchical transition of power. Khamenei’s selection has the potential to generate backlash from within a system already facing existential threats from the U.S. and Israel’s ongoing military operations.

But, as Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ senior Iran analyst Behnam Ben Taleblu noted, there’s an argument to be made that authority in Shi’ism is patrilineal, which may ultimately bode well for Khamenei’s backing from supporters eager to see their fallen leader’s line prevail.

Since the 1979 revolution, ultimate authority in Iran has rested with its supreme ruler, though the distribution of power throughout its clerical system and Revolutionary Guard Corps have ensured that the regime’s strength remains deeply rooted in the event of a supreme leader’s death.

Khamenei will assume leadership from the interim transitional council put in place to guide the government after his father’s death. He was selected to replace the slain ayatollah by the Assembly of Experts, a council of clerics tasked with deciding the new supreme leader.

Earlier Sunday, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said the United States would not be involved in the selection of Iran’s new leader.

“We allow nobody to interfere in our domestic affairs,” he said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “This is up to the Iranian people.”