After more than a week of US and Israeli bombings, nearly 1,200 Iranian deaths, seven US soldiers, damaged infrastructure, skyrocketing oil prices, blockaded ships and grounded aircraft, Iran got the new leader it had been waiting for for years.
Mojtaba Khamenei, the 56-year-old son of the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has been named Iran’s new supreme leader as the Islamic regime faces an existential crisis. The message of the meeting of experts, empowered to appoint a new leader, was clear to Iran and the world. The Velayat-e-FaqihWhile the Shiite political ideology that underpins the Islamic Republic of Iran continues, resistance will not be cowed, and the change many Iranians crave is nowhere close.
Khamenei was installed as the new leader just a week after Iranian officials confirmed the death of his 86-year-old father in the initial round of US-Israeli strikes. Amid rumors of logistical difficulties holding the vote and speculation that the war might strengthen reformist voices, the decision was swift and unequivocal.
“The message is very clear. It is a message of determination sent by the Iranian government,” said Siavosh Ghazi of France 24, reporting from Tehran the morning after the announcement. “Members of the Assembly of Experts said he was continuing his father’s legacy…As a result, the outcome of the war started by (US President) Donald Trump and (Israeli Prime Minister) Benjamin Netanyahu was to replace an 86-year-old with a 56-year-old.
To prove this point, Iranian state media followed up the announcement around 1 a.m. local time on Monday with a report of a new attack on Israel. State radio stations announced that “Iran under the leadership of Ayatollah Seyed Mojtaba Khamenei fired the first wave of missiles towards the occupied territories (Palestine),” while state TV broadcast a photograph of the missile bearing the slogan “At your command, Seyed Mojtaba” as an Islamic tribute.
Iran’s oil-rich Gulf neighbors received a business-as-usual message after hours, with Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait and Qatar reporting new explosions and attacks on Monday. Asian markets, opening the new week of trading, reflected economic pressures from Iran’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world’s oil is shipped. Oil prices soared to a historic high of $120 a barrel on Monday morning, before falling in a whiplash trading session.
Read moreOil prices hit historic highs after Iran named a new supreme leader
‘Going Full Dynasty’
Almost half a century after the Islamic Revolution overthrew the Pahlavi monarchy, the appointment of another Khamenei as leader of the republic was a statement of defiance. In Ali Khamenei’s final years, experts vetting potential succession candidates noted the difficulty of selecting his son for a regime that “pride itself on overturning thousands of years of monarchical rule.”
But in the end, the transfer of dynastic power went off without a hitch. “This is not surprising in the sense that all revolutions tend to replace what they destroy in the same way,” said Rouzbe Parsi, a history professor at Lund University in Sweden. “So, in that sense, it’s not surprising to go to a full dynasty. There’s also an element of this in Shia theology, where the idea of sanctity and the idea of charisma and leadership goes down through the family.”
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While his father was in office, Mojtaba Khamenei held no official government position. But his years of work among the supreme leaders Bate The office as a sort of aide-de-camp, personal aide and confidant of his father placed him at the center of political, economic and, most importantly, security networks in Iran.
Iran’s Supreme Leader has ultimate authority over all branches of government and heads the security establishment, which includes the army, navy, intelligence agencies and, above all, the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), a parallel armed force that includes allied organizations such as the Basij militia.
According to some estimates, the IRGC has financial influence, accounting for about 25% of Iran’s economy.
Khamenei was believed to be the right-hand man of his octogenarian father for several years, fueling speculation that the son was effectively managing the day-to-day running of the state.
Security links, financial assets, religious credentials
Born in the city of Mashhad in 1969, Khamenei fought with a section of the IRGC in the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq War, many of whom rose to powerful intelligence positions within the force, cementing his connections within the organization that grew to become the country’s most influential institution.
After his father became supreme leader in 1989, he 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 previous shah.
According to US and Israeli sources, during his father’s reign, Khamenei used his proximity to the leadership to amass his own power. US diplomatic cables published by WikiLeaks in the late 2000s suggested that he served as his father’s “principal gatekeeper” and was creating his own power base in the country.
During the crisis, Khamenei’s familiarity with the regime’s ropes and knowledge of the shadowy operations of the IRGC – also known as the “Guards” – was considered an asset, according to experts.
Unlike his father, a mid-level cleric who replaced Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic, in 1989, Khamenei will assume the position of spiritual leader of the Islamic Republic with the requisite religious credentials.
Khamenei’s clerical studies included instruction at a prestigious seminary in the holy city of Qom. After that there was more than a decade of teaching Dars-e Kharaj – Higher level seminary education in Shia Islamic jurisprudence. He reached the clerical rank of ayatollah in 2022, according to Qom Seminary’s news agency.
This puts them in a safe position in Iran’s power circles, according to experts. “We have to remember that his father needed a decade or more to build up his own credibility and his own ability to run the system. Now, Mojtaba comes with strong cards in terms of his connections, but it is a weak position that he relies heavily on those groups, mostly the Revolutionary Guards,” Parsi said.
‘Replacing the Taliban with the Taliban’
The second of Ali Khamenei’s six children, the new Supreme Leader is believed to be extremely close to his father. The 56-year-old cleric took office a week after his father, his mother Mansoure Khojasteh Bagherzadeh, his wife Zahra Adel and one of their sons were killed in a US-Israeli strike, according to the Iranian government.
Their loss is unlikely to sway them toward a diplomatic solution to end the current conflict. It also undermines the reformist faction’s hopes of usurping or influencing the office of the Supreme Leader.
“I think for the moment, they’re all united that they see an existential threat in the Israeli-American war and that they have to deal with that first,” Parsi said.
Iran’s proxies in the region, including the Houthis in Yemen and Hezbollah in Lebanon, have pledged allegiance to the new leader and fallen into line.
Across the Persian Gulf, Iranian attacks on oil-rich Gulf monarchies in retaliation for US-Israeli attacks have strengthened the Islamic regime’s ability to disrupt global oil shipments, which some experts say will determine the balance of power in the region.
“What Iran has done is increase the pressure on the Americans, the whole global system, which the Americans in a sense underwrite,” Parsi said. “The Iranians are able to influence what’s going on and it’s making it very difficult for the Americans to have this conflict for just one country, so the rest of the world goes about their business. Things are not happening. The fact that the Americans don’t have a clear strategy that they want with this war makes it easier for the Iranians, in a sense, to play this game.”
Last week, Trump announced that he wanted a say in the appointment of Iran’s new leader. It didn’t happen. As supreme leader, Khamenei, like his father, is now more in the sights of US-Israeli beheading strikes. But the Islamic regime has given its message of continuity regardless of the fall of the top cadre.
For some experts, the appointment of a new version of Iran’s old leader underscores the failure of the US in the region, which was entirely focused on the Taliban takeover in 2021 in neighboring Afghanistan.
Several Iran experts took to social media on Monday to explain the matter. “America has spent 20 years and trillions of dollars to replace the Taliban with the Taliban,” Iranian political analyst Ali Alizadeh said at X. “Trump replaced Ayatollah Khamenei in just 9 days with Ayatollah Khamenei. The most efficient president ever,” he wryly noted.
(tags to translate)Middle East
