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Mojtaba Khamenei, the son of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has been chosen to switch his father as Supreme Leader of Iran.
A secretive figure throughout the Islamic Republic, Mojtaba vanished from the general public eye in the times after an Israeli airstrike targeting government offices killed his 86-year-old father firstly of the war.
Mojtaba’s wife of greater than 20 years, Zahra Haddad Adel, was also killed in the identical strike.
Now, the younger Khamenei could have a central say in Iran’s war strategy, with the country’s powerful paramilitary Revolutionary Guard answering on to him.
The announcement of the brand new Ayatollah got here after signs of a rift amongst officials as Iran awaited the choice by the 88-seat Assembly of Experts, a bunch of clerics that selects the supreme leader.
His candidacy can have been not directly boosted by US President Donald Trump, who criticised the younger Khamenei in an interview and insisted that he be involved in choosing Iran’s next leader.
‘They’re wasting their time. Khamenei’s son is a light-weight. I actually have to be involved within the appointment,’ Trump said, referring to his operation that saw the US military seize former Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro.
‘Khamenei’s son is unacceptable to me. We wish someone who will bring harmony and peace to Iran.’
The thought of getting Mojtaba replace his father had been criticised as potentially making a theocratic version of Iran’s former hereditary monarchy.
The younger Khamenei has gained control not only of an Iranian military now at war but in addition a stockpile of highly enriched uranium that could possibly be used to construct a nuclear weapon – should he decide to decree it.
Before his selection, he had been a mixture of aide-de-camp, confidant, gatekeeper and power broker, in line with United Against Nuclear Iran, a US-based pressure group.
Who’s Mojtaba Khamenei?
Born in 1969 in the town of Mashhad, some 10 years before the 1979 Islamic Revolution that may sweep Iran, the younger Khamenei grew up as his father agitated against Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.
An official biography of Ali Khamenei recounts a moment when the shah’s secret police, the Savak, broke into their home and beat the cleric.
Woken up after, Mojtaba and the remainder of Mr Khamenei’s children were told their father was happening holiday.
‘But I told them, ‘There is no such thing as a must lie.’ I told them the reality,’ Ali Khamenei was quoted as saying.
After the autumn of the Shah, the family moved to Tehran, Iran’s capital, before Mojtaba’s father fought within the Iran-Iraq War.
His father became the supreme leader in 1989, and shortly Mojtaba and his family had access to the billions of dollars and business assets spread across Iran’s many bonyads, or foundations, funded from state industries and other wealth once held by the shah.
His own power rose alongside his father’s, working inside his offices in downtown Tehran. US diplomatic cables published by WikiLeaks within the late 2000s began referring to the younger Khamenei as ‘the facility behind the robes’.
Mojtaba Khamenei has worked closely with Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, each with commanders of its expeditionary Quds Force and its all-volunteer Basij that violently suppressed nationwide protests in January, the US Treasury has said.
What does this mean for the war?
The brand new leader will come on board after the 12-day war with Israel, and as a US-Israeli war with Iran is searching for to eliminate Iran’s nuclear threat and military power, hoping also that the Iranian people will stand up against the Iranian theocracy.
The supreme leader is at the guts of Iran’s complex power-sharing Shiite theocracy and has final say over all matters of state.
Trump’s past discontent with Mojtaba as a alternative to switch his father means the brand new Ayatollah could face intense targeting and more threats to his life if the war continues.
Within the meantime, he serves because the commander-in-chief of the country’s military and the Guard, a paramilitary force that america designated a terrorist organisation in 2019, and which his father empowered during his rule.
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