Iran: The son, Mojtaba Khamenei, would be his father’s successor

Mojtaba Khamenei, son of Iran's late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei
Photo: ‘Asia Times’

The senior clerics responsible for selecting Iran’s next supreme leader met on Tuesday to deliberate, and the son of the slain former leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, emerged as the clear front-runner, according to three Iranian officials familiar with the deliberations, ‘The New York Times’ reports.

The officials said that the clerics were considering announcing that the son, Mojtaba Khamenei, would be his father’s successor as early as Wednesday morning.

The clerics, known as the Assembly of Experts, held two virtual meetings, one in the morning and one in the evening, according to the officials. Israel struck a building in Qum, one of Shiite Islam’s main seats of power, where the assembly was scheduled to meet and elect the new supreme leader, but the building was empty, according to the Fars News agency, which is affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.

Vali Nasr, an expert of Iran and Shiite Islam at Johns Hopkins University, said that Mr. Khamenei would be a surprising choice — and a potentially telling one.

“He was slated to become the successor for a long time,” Mr. Nasr said, “but for the past two years, it seemed to have dropped off from the radar. If he is elected, it suggests it is a much more hard-line Revolutionary Guard side of the regime that is now in charge.”

Mojtaba Khamenei, 56, is an influential if reclusive figure who has operated in the shadows of the empire of his father, who was killed on Saturday in the U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran.

Mr. Khamenei is known for having close ties to the Revolutionary Guards. The Guards, according to the three officials, pushed for his appointment, arguing that he had the qualifications needed to steer Iran in this time of crisis.

“Mojtaba is the wisest pick right now because he is intimately familiar with running and coordinating security and military apparatuses,” said Mehdi Rahmati, an analyst in Tehran. “He was in charge of this already.”

Supporters of the government would see him as a continuation of a ruler whom they view as martyred and would back him swiftly, Mr. Rahmati said.

Other candidates who have emerged as finalists are Alireza Arafi, a cleric and jurist who is part of the three-person transition council of leadership named after Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed, and Seyed Hassan Khomeini, grandson of the Islamic revolution’s founding father, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

The Assembly of Experts consists of 88 senior Shiite clerics who are picked in public elections and under Iran’s Constitution are responsible for appointing, supervising and discharging the supreme leader. This is the second supreme leader the assembly will pick in the Islamic republic’s 47-year history.

In 1989, the assembly picked Ayatollah Khamenei, handing him the reins of a newly created theocracy. For more than four decades he ruled with absolute power and little flexibility to change.

Mojtaba Khamenei’s wife, Zahra Adel; his mother, Mansoureh Khojasteh Bagherzadeh, and a son were killed alongside his father in strikes on Saturday, the Iranian government said.

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