Sunday’s selection of Mojtaba Khamenei as Iran’s new supreme leader runs counter to a foundational pillar of the 1979 Islamic Revolution, which ousted the then-ruling shah and installed theocratic rule in Tehran.
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the revolution’s leader, rejected the hereditary governance of Iran’s Pahlavi dynasty as a violation of Islamic principles.
His unrelated successor, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, ruled Iran from 1989 to Feb. 28, when he was killed on the first day of joint U.S.-Israeli airstrikes.
After days of bombings and an ultimatum from U.S. President Trump demanding “unconditional surrender,” the clerics charged with choosing a new leader defiantly answered Sunday with Mojtaba Khamenei, 56, the second son of the slain ayatollah.
Analysts say the younger Mr. Khamenei is considered a mid-range cleric rather than a senior religious figure like his father, or Ruhollah Khomeini.
But what he lacks in theological training, Mr. Khamenei more than makes up for with his connection to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the powerful “state within a state” in Iran that maintains its own military and controls much of the country’s economy.
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“Mojtaba Khamenei is the preferred candidate of the regime’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and signals the regime’s efforts to project continuity, not reform,” said Benham Ben Taleblu, the Iran Program’s senior director at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies think tank. “Under his leadership, the IRGC is likely to grow, and so too will its brutal repression.”
Mr. Khamenei served in the IRGC during the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s. According to the anti-regime advocacy group United Against Nuclear Iran, he forged close relationships with other IRGC members who would go on to become leading members of Iran’s security services.
He reportedly helped engineer the election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the former president of Iran. Mr. Khamenei also ordered the Basij, an IRGC paramilitary organization, to crack down on anti-regime demonstrators.
There is also evidence to suggest that Mr. Khamenei commands considerable Iranian financial resources, United Against Nuclear Iran said.
“In 2009, the U.K. government froze a bank account worth around $1.6 billion which was rumored to be under the control of the supreme leader’s son himself,” the group said.
He was sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department in 2019 for representing his father in an official capacity despite never having been elected or appointed to a government position.
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Officials in Washington said Mr. Khamenei worked closely with the commander of the IRGC’s Quds Force and the Basij to “advance his father’s destabilizing regional ambitions and oppressive domestic objectives.”
Former Treasury Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin accused him of being part of a group of Iranian officials linked to a “wide range of malign behaviors,” including the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Marine Barracks in Beirut and the 1984 bombing of a Jewish community center in Argentina.
Until he died in a May 2024 helicopter crash, then-President Ibrahim Raisi was considered the establishment’s leading candidate to follow Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as supreme leader. The only other prominent candidate was Mojtaba Khamenei, despite his lack of theological and administrative experience and the regime’s stated rejection of hereditary rule.
Mr. Trump predicted that Mr. Khamenei would not have long to serve. The Israel Defense Forces warned that any leader appointed by Iran’s ruling regime would become a legitimate military target.
“It does not matter what his name is or the place where he hides,” Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz posted on X. “The Prime Minister and I have instructed the IDF to prepare and act by all means to carry out the mission as an integral part of the objectives of Operation Lion’s Roar.”
While the regime in Tehran continues fighting against the U.S.-Israel coalition, it also fears for its future, said Mr. Ben Taleblu of the FDD.
“Mojtaba has not been seen publicly, nor has a funeral been held for his father,” he said. “The question now is: How long will he be supreme leader?”
• Mike Glenn can be reached at mglenn@washingtontimes.com.
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