Tehran – Iran’s Assembly of Experts announced Mojtaba Khamenei, the son of the slain Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, as the country’s new supreme leader on Sunday.
In a lengthy statement, the assembly said that “after careful and extensive studies… in today’s extraordinary session, Ayatollah Seyyed Mojtaba Hosseini Khamenei (may Allah protect him) is appointed and introduced as the third leader of the sacred system of the Islamic Republic of Iran, based on the decisive vote of the respected representatives of the Assembly of Experts.”
The younger Khamenei was named supreme leader by the top clerical body, the Assembly of Experts, in a statement published shortly after midnight on Monday in Iran.
Other contenders for the top position included Alireza Arafi, one of the three members of the interim council running the country; hardliner Mohsen Araki; and even Hassan Khomeini, the grandson of the founder of the Islamic Republic in 1979.
But ultimately the assembly settled on Mojtaba Khamenei, 56, opting for the kind of hereditary transition that his father had rejected on principle in 2024.
The Islamic revolution had put an end to a multi-century royal dynasty headed by the shah.
Born on September 8, 1969, in the holy city of Mashhad in eastern Iran, Mojtaba Khamenei is one of six children of the late supreme leader.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed aged 86 just over a week ago in Tehran during the first wave of US-Israeli air strikes that sparked the war in the Middle East.
Because of his discretion at official ceremonies and in the media, Mojtaba Khamenei’s true influence has been the subject of intense speculation for years among the Iranian population as well as in diplomatic circles.
He is the only child of the former supreme leader to hold a public position, despite having no official post.
