Mojtaba Khamenei, the son of late Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, has been appointed to succeed his father as the new head of the Islamic Republic.
The younger Khamenei was named Supreme Leader by the country’s top clerical body, the Assembly of Experts, early on Monday morning.
Other contenders for the top position had included Alireza Arafi, one of the three members of the interim council running the country, hardliner Mohsen Araki, and even Hassan Khomeini, the grandson of the founder of the Islamic Republic in 1979.
But ultimately, the assembly settled on Mojtaba Khamenei, 56, opting for the kind of hereditary transition that his father had rejected on principle in 2024. The Islamic revolution had put an end to a multi-century royal dynasty headed by the Shah.
Born on September 8, 1969, in the holy city of Mashhad in eastern Iran, Mojtaba Khamenei is one of six children of the late Supreme Leader.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed, aged 86, just over a week ago in Tehran during the first wave of US-Israeli air strikes that triggered the war in the Middle East.
Because of his discretion at official ceremonies and in the media, Mojtaba Khamenei’s true influence has been the subject of intense speculation for years among the Iranian population as well as in diplomatic circles.
He is the only child of the former Supreme Leader to hold a public position, despite having no official post.
The cleric, who has a salt-and-pepper beard and the black turban of the “seyyed”, descendants of the Prophet Mohammed, has been presented by some as acting behind the scenes to pull strings at the heart of power in Iran.
He is regarded as close to conservatives, notably because of his ties with the Revolutionary Guards, the ideological arm of the Islamic Republic’s military.
That relationship dates back to his service in a combat unit at the end of the war between Iraq and Iran that lasted from 1980 to 1988.
The US Treasury Department imposed sanctions on Mojtaba Khamenei in 2019 during President Donald Trump’s first term, saying he represented the Supreme Leader “despite never being elected or appointed to a Government position aside from work in the office of his father”.
Ali Khamenei had “delegated a part of his leadership responsibilities” to his son, “who worked closely” with Iranian security forces “to advance his father’s destabilising regional ambitions and oppressive domestic objectives”, Treasury said.
Opponents have notably accused him of playing a role in the violent crackdown that followed the re-election of ultra-conservative President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2009, which triggered a vast protest movement.
According to an investigation by the Bloomberg news organisation, which cited anonymous sources and Western intelligence agency reports, Mojtaba Khamenei has amassed wealth estimated at more than US$100 million ($170m).
Money from oil sales had been channelled into investments in luxury British real estate, hotels in Europe and property in Dubai through shell companies in tax havens, according to the investigation.
On the religious front, Mojtaba Khamenei studied theology in the holy city of Qom, south of Tehran, where he also taught.
He attained the rank of Hujjat al-Islam, a title given to mid-ranking clerics, below that of Ayatollah held by his father and by revolutionary leader Ruhollah Khomeini.
His wife, Zahra Haddad-Adel, daughter of a former speaker of parliament, also died in the US-Israeli strikes that killed the Supreme Leader, according to Iranian authorities.
Israel has issued a stark warning to the new Supreme Leader and whoever selected him, saying “the hand of the State of Israel will continue to follow any successor and anyone who seeks to appoint a successor”.
The Assembly of Experts has 88 members, who are elected every eight years.
It has only overseen one leadership transition process to date, when Khamenei was selected in after the death of Khomeini.
– Agence France-Presse