What to find out about Mojtaba Khamenei, Iran’s new supreme chief

Iran’s killed supreme chief shall be changed by considered one of his sons, Mojtaba Khamenei, a mid-ranking cleric who has till now wielded his energy completely behind the scenes.

Iran’s Meeting of Specialists — the clerical physique tasked with choosing the nation’s supreme chief — mentioned on Sunday {that a} majority of its members voted to nominate Khamenei because the Islamic Republic’s third supreme chief since its founding in 1979.

The announcement appeared in state media simply over every week after the previous supreme chief, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was killed in a joint U.S.-Israeli assault. His practically four-decade rule was marked by staunch opposition to each nations in addition to any efforts to reform or modernize Iran. Questions loom about Iran’s future because it responds with continued strikes on Israel and Gulf states.

The youthful Khamenei’s appointment solutions a few of these questions. The 56-year-old has shut ties to Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), signaling a continuation of his father’s hard-line theocratic rule.

“[Of] all the candidates that were put out there, he was the one that was closest to the IRGC. He was also very well-connected in his father’s own office,” Iran specialist Afshon Ostovar advised NPR final week, as Khamenei emerged as some of the probably successors. Ostovar mentioned his choice would imply “the regime wants to preserve as much of the status quo as possible.”

However Khamenei can be a relative thriller. He has by no means held a proper place in authorities. And he hardly ever speaks or seems in public, save for infrequent loyalist rallies.

“He’s kind of an unknown quantity,” Ostovar mentioned. “He’s sort of a guy who you see in pictures, in meetings, that sort of thing, kind of in the background.”

However he has lengthy been accused — together with by analysts, Iranian dissidents and the U.S. authorities — of amassing energy and pulling strings from inside his father’s inside circle. This is what to find out about Khamenei as he strikes into the foreground.

The second son of the supreme chief

Khamenei is the second of the late chief’s six kids. He was born in 1969 and grew up within the holy Shia Muslim metropolis of Mashhad, in northeastern Iran, as his father was rising as a number one anti-monarchy revolutionary determine.

After the 1979 revolution, the household moved to Tehran, and the elder Khamenei took up key positions within the new authorities, from deputy protection minister to president and at last to supreme chief in 1989.

In the meantime, his son graduated from the elite Alavi Excessive Faculty earlier than becoming a member of the Revolutionary Guard. The youthful Khamenei served within the armed forces throughout the remaining years of the Iran-Iraq Struggle (which led to 1988), forming relationships with future key gamers within the Iranian safety providers.

Khamenei went on to pursue theology, a path that led him to the holy metropolis of Qom to check below — and construct relationships with — ultra-conservative non secular clerics. He holds the clerical rank of “hujjat al-Islam,” which ranks beneath the senior rank of “ayatollah” (which his personal father solely attained after being chosen as supreme chief).

Khamenei additional cemented his political connections together with his marriage to Zahra Haddad Adel, the daughter of a distinguished hardliner: Gholam-Ali Hadad-Adel, a former parliament speaker who is taken into account a detailed member of the late supreme chief’s inside circle. Iranian state media have reported that the youthful Khamenei’s spouse — in addition to his mom, sister and brother-in-law — have been killed within the Feb. 28 strike that killed his father.

Alleged behind-the-scenes affect 

The U.S. Treasury Division imposed sanctions on Mojtaba Khamenei — and his father-in-law — below the primary Trump administration in 2019, for what it mentioned was “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 U.S. mentioned the supreme chief had “delegated a part of his leadership responsibilities to his son.”

Particularly, it mentioned the youthful Khamenei labored intently with the commander of the Revolutionary Guard and the Basij Resistance Drive (a volunteer paramilitary group centered on home safety and suppressing political dissent) “to advance his father’s destabilizing regional ambitions and oppressive domestic objectives.”

That wasn’t the one time Mojtaba Khamenei was accused of quietly influencing Iranian affairs, together with a number of presidential elections.

He’s believed to be behind the sudden rise of hard-line former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2005 and his reelection within the disputed election of 2009, which resulted in huge anti-government protests suppressed by safety forces, together with the Basij. One of many chants of pro-reform protesters was: “Wish you death Mojtaba, so you would never be the next leader!”

Former parliamentary speaker Mehdi Karroubi, who ran in each of these elections, wrote letters to the supreme chief in 2005 and 2009 accusing “the master’s son” of interference. The supreme chief took problem with that characterization, calling Khamenei “a master himself, not a master’s son.” Karroubi was positioned below home arrest in 2011 for his position in protests over the election outcomes and held for over 14 years and not using a trial or prices.

An unsurprising however controversial choose

Khamenei’s choice is already controversial: The Israeli army warned on social media that he was a goal earlier than he was even chosen, whereas President Trump — who needs to be concerned in selecting Iran’s new chief — known as him “unacceptable.”

“They are wasting their time. Khamenei’s son is a lightweight,” Trump advised Axios final week, earlier than a call was introduced.

Iran’s defiant alternative suggests the highway to decision on this battle could possibly be lengthy. Crude oil markets reacted accordingly on Sunday, rocketing previous $100 for the primary time since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Khamenei’s choice could possibly be unpopular at dwelling, provided that Iranians had taken to the streets to protest financial circumstances and name for regime change — prompting a lethal authorities crackdown — effectively earlier than the present outbreak of combating. It additionally bears a resemblance to a hereditary monarchy, the very system of presidency that revolutionaries overthrew in 1979.