Mojtaba Khamenei, the second son of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has again emerged as a potential figure to succeed his father, who was killed on the first day of the war with the United States and Israel.
No official announcement has been made by local authorities, but Israeli and Western media outlets have reported that Mojtaba Khamenei, a hardline cleric, is the frontrunner to become the new supreme leader of the 47-year-old Islamic Republic. His mother, wife, and one of his sisters were also killed in the strike, but the younger Khamenei was reportedly not present, and has so far survived the intense bombing of Iran.
Khamenei has never run for office or been subjected to a public vote, but has for decades been a highly influential figure in the inner circle of the supreme leader, cultivating deep ties to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
In recent years, Khamenei has increasingly been touted as a top potential replacement for his father, who was president for nearly eight years and then held absolute power for 36 years before being killed in attacks on his compound in Tehran on Saturday.
If he does ascend to power, then it would be a sign that more hardline factions in Iran’s establishment retain power, and could indicate that the government has little desire to agree to a deal or negotiations in the short term.
The 56-year-old younger Khamenei has never discussed the issue of succession publicly, a sensitive topic considering that his ascendancy to the position of supreme leader would effectively create a dynasty reminiscent of the Pahlavi monarchy before the 1979 Islamic revolution.
Instead, Khamenei has largely kept a low profile, not giving public lectures, Friday sermons, or political addresses – to the point that many Iranians have not heard his voice, despite knowing for years that he was a star rising within the theocratic establishment.
Accusations
For nearly two decades, local and foreign-based opponents have linked Khamenei’s name to the violent suppression of Iranian protesters.
The reformist camp within the Islamic Republic first accused him of tampering with elections and wielding the IRGC’s paramilitary Basij force to crack down on peaceful protesters during the Green Movement of 2009, which took form after populist politician Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was reelected as president in a controversial vote.
Basij forces have since been at the heart of the establishment’s crackdown against multiple waves of nationwide protests, most prominently two months ago, when the United Nations and international human rights organisations say state forces killed thousands, mostly on the nights of January 8 and 9.
The late supreme leader and the establishment have blamed “terrorists” and “rioters”, armed, trained and funded by the US and Israel, for the unprecedented killings, as they have previously done during previous rounds of anti-establishment protests.
Mid-ranking cleric
Khamenei began developing close ties within the IRGC from his younger years, when he served in the Habib Battalion of the force during multiple operations in the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s. Several of his comrades, including other clerics, went on to obtain leading posts in the security and intelligence apparatus of the then-nascent Islamic Republic.
Khamenei, who is under US and Western sanctions, has also amassed an economic empire involving assets in multiple countries, according to reports in Western media outlets.
His name is not believed to appear in any of the alleged transactions, but he has reportedly moved billions of dollars over the years through a network of insiders and associates linked with the Iranian establishment.
Bloomberg tied Khamenei to Ali Ansari, who was in the spotlight late last year after his Bank Ayandeh was forcibly dissolved by the state because it went bankrupt due to handing out loans to unnamed insiders and accruing huge debts. The dissolution of the bank helped push Iran’s rampant inflation higher, making Iranians poorer as the losses had to be compensated partly through public funds.
Neither Khamenei nor Ansari have publicly addressed their links and the allegations, which also include the purchase of luxury property in European countries.
Khamenei’s religious credentials have also been an issue of contention, since he is a hojatoleslam, a mid-level cleric, rather than the higher rank of ayatollah. But his father was not an ayatollah either when he became the country’s leader in 1989, and the law was amended to accommodate him, so a similar compromise could be possible for him as well.
For now, it remains unclear when or how the Islamic Republic will proceed with announcing new leaders, as it once again imposes a nationwide internet blackout and restrictions on the flow of information amid an intense bombing campaign by the US and Israel across the country.
A three-member council consisting of hardline cleric and Guardian Council member Alireza Arafi, ultra-conservative cleric and judiciary chief Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei and President Masoud Pezeshkian has now been legally mandated to take over interim governance.
Iranian law says that the 88-member clerical body known as the Assembly of Experts, whose offices have been bombed along with other state-linked centres over the past day, is responsible for announcing the new supreme leader.