As the son of Iran’s late supreme leader, he is a potential candidate to replace his father

Dubai, United Arab Emirates — Mojtaba Khamenei, the son of Iran’s late supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was considered a contender for the country’s next supreme ruler, despite never having been elected or appointed to a government post, before an Israeli strike killed his father at the start of the war last week.

Mojtaba Khamenei, a secretive figure in the Islamic Republic, has not been seen in public since Saturday, when the Israeli supreme leader’s offices were targeted and his 86-year-old father killed. The younger Khamenei’s wife, Zahra Haddad Adel, who came from a family long associated with the country’s theocracy, was also killed.

Khamenei is believed to still be alive and in hiding as US and Israeli airstrikes continue to pound Iran, although state-run Iranian media have not reported his whereabouts.

The name of Mojtaba Khamenei, previously criticized as potentially creating a theocratic version of Iran’s former hereditary monarchy, has been circulating as a possible candidate to succeed his father.

But now that his father and wife are considered martyrs in the war against the United States and Israel, Khamenei’s stock has risen with the aging clergy of the 88-seat Assembly of Experts, who will choose the country’s next supreme leader.

Whoever becomes leader will now gain control of Iran’s embattled military and, if they rule, a stockpile of highly enriched uranium that could be used to build a nuclear weapon.

According to United Against Nuclear Iran, a US-based pressure group, Khamenei occupies a role similar to that of Ahmad Khomeini, the son of Iran’s first supreme leader, Ruhollah Khomeini.

And US President Donald Trump may have indirectly boosted his candidacy by criticizing Khamenei in an interview with the news website Axios on Thursday and demanding that he be involved in choosing Iran’s next leader.

“They’re wasting their time. Khamenei’s son is a lightweight. I have to get involved in recruiting,” Trump said, referring to the US military’s operation to capture former Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro.

“Khameni’s son is unacceptable to me,” Trump added. “We want someone who will bring harmony and peace to Iran.”

Born in the city of Mashhad in 1969, Khamenei grew up around 10 years before the 1979 Islamic Revolution that would sweep Iran, his father agitating against Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.

An official biography of Ali Khamenei’s life describes a moment when the Shah’s secret police, SAVAK, broke into his home and beat the cleric. Waking up later, Mojtaba and Khamenei’s remaining children were told that their father was going on vacation.

“But I told them, ‘There is no need to lie.’ I told them the truth,” the elder Khamenei was quoted as saying.

After the fall of the Shah, Khamenei’s family moved to Tehran, the capital of Iran. Khamenei fought in the Iran-Iraq War with the Habib Ibn Mazahir Battalion, a unit of Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard that saw several of its members rise to powerful intelligence positions within the force, possibly with the support of the Khamenei family.

His father became supreme leader in 1989, and soon Mojtaba Khamenei and his family had access to billions of dollars and business assets spread across Iran’s many bonyads, or foundations, funded by state industries and other wealth once owned by the shah.

His own power rose alongside his father, working in his offices in downtown Tehran. In the late 2000s, US diplomatic cables published by WikiLeaks began referring to the younger Khamenei as “the power behind the clothes”. Khamenei actually tapped his own father’s phone, serving as his “chief gatekeeper” and creating his own power inside the country, one explained.

Khamenei is widely viewed as an able and powerful leader and administrator in the regime who may one day attain at least a share of the national leadership; Even his father could see him in that light,” read the 2008 cable, also noting his lack of theological qualifications and age.

“However, because of Mojtaba’s skills, wealth and unparalleled alliances, many administration insiders see him as a plausible candidate for shared leadership of Iran after his father’s death, whether that death is imminent or in the future,” it said.

Khamenei has worked closely with Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, its expeditionary Quds Force and its all-volunteer Basij, which violently suppressed nationwide protests in January, the US Treasury said.

The United States sanctioned Trump in 2019 after he worked to “advance his father’s destabilizing regional ambitions and oppressive domestic objectives” during his first term.

This includes allegations of behind-the-scenes support for the election of hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2005, and his disputed re-election in 2009 that led to Green Movement protests.

Mahdi Karoubi, a presidential candidate in 2005 and 2009, denounced Khamenei as “the master’s son” and accused him of interfering in both votes. His father said at the time that Khamenei was “a master himself, not a master’s son”.

Another transfer of power in the office of Iran’s Supreme Leader since the Islamic Revolution. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini has died aged 86 and was a key figure in the revolution and led Iran through the eight-year war with Iraq.

Now that a new leader comes on board after the 12-day war with Israel and the US-Israeli war with Iran trying to eliminate Iran’s nuclear threat and military power, the Iranian people are hoping that they will rise up against the Iranian theocracy.

The Supreme Leader is at the heart of Iran’s complex power-sharing Shiite theocracy and has the final say on all matters of state. He serves as commander-in-chief of the country’s military and guard, a paramilitary force designated a terrorist organization by the United States in 2019 and authorized by his father during his administration.

The Guard, which leads the self-described “Axis of Resistance,” a series of militant groups and allies across the Middle East to counter the US and Israel, has extensive wealth and holdings in Iran. It also controls the country’s ballistic missile arsenal.