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A supporter poses with an image of Iran’s new supreme chief, Mojtaba Khamenei, throughout a rally in central Tehran on Monday.
Atta Kenare/AFP by way of Getty Photographs
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Atta Kenare/AFP by way of Getty Photographs
Iran’s killed supreme chief shall be changed by one in all his sons, Mojtaba Khamenei, a mid-ranking cleric who has till now wielded his energy solely behind the scenes.
Iran’s Meeting of Specialists — the clerical physique tasked with deciding on the nation’s supreme chief — mentioned on Sunday {that a} majority of its members voted to nominate Khamenei because the Islamic Republic’s third supreme chief since its founding in 1979.
The announcement appeared in state media simply over every week after the previous supreme chief, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was killed in a joint U.S.-Israeli assault. His practically four-decade rule was marked by staunch opposition to each international locations in addition to any efforts to reform or modernize Iran. Questions loom about Iran’s future because it responds with continued strikes on Israel and Gulf states.
The youthful Khamenei’s appointment solutions a few of these questions. The 56-year-old has shut ties to Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), signaling a continuation of his father’s hard-line theocratic rule.
“[Of] all of the candidates that had been put on the market, he was the one which was closest to the IRGC. He was additionally very well-connected in his father’s personal workplace,” Iran specialist Afshon Ostovar instructed NPR final week, as Khamenei emerged as one of the crucial possible successors. Ostovar mentioned his choice would imply “the regime desires to protect as a lot of the established order as potential.”
However Khamenei can be a relative thriller. He has by no means held a proper place in authorities. And he hardly ever speaks or seems in public, save for infrequent loyalist rallies.
“He is sort of an unknown amount,” Ostovar mentioned. “He is form of a man who you see in footage, in conferences, that form of factor, sort of within the background.”
However he has lengthy been accused — together with by analysts, Iranian dissidents and the U.S. authorities — of amassing energy and pulling strings from inside his father’s interior circle. This is what to find out about Khamenei as he strikes into the foreground.
Mojtaba Khamenei pictured in Tehran in December 2016. He’s the second son of Iran’s Supreme Chief Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed in joint U.S.-Israeli airstrikes in late February.
Reza B/Center East Photographs/AFP by way of Getty Photographs
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Reza B/Center East Photographs/AFP by way of Getty Photographs
The second son of the supreme chief
Khamenei is the second of the late chief’s six youngsters. He was born in 1969 and grew up within the holy Shia Muslim metropolis of Mashhad, in northeastern Iran, as his father was rising as a number one anti-monarchy revolutionary determine.
After the 1979 revolution, the household moved to Tehran, and the elder Khamenei took up key positions within the new authorities, from deputy protection minister to president and eventually to supreme chief in 1989.
In the meantime, his son graduated from the elite Alavi Excessive Faculty earlier than becoming a member of the Revolutionary Guard. The youthful Khamenei served within the armed forces throughout the ultimate years of the Iran-Iraq Battle (which resulted in 1988), forming relationships with future key gamers within the Iranian safety companies.
Khamenei went on to pursue theology, a path that led him to the holy metropolis of Qom to review underneath — and construct relationships with — ultra-conservative non secular clerics. He holds the clerical rank of “hujjat al-Islam,” which ranks under the senior rank of “ayatollah” (which his personal father solely attained after being chosen as supreme chief).
Khamenei additional cemented his political connections together with his marriage to Zahra Haddad Adel, the daughter of a distinguished hardliner: Gholam-Ali Hadad-Adel, a former parliament speaker who is taken into account an in depth member of the late supreme chief’s interior circle. Iranian state media have reported that the youthful Khamenei’s spouse — in addition to his mom, sister and brother-in-law — had been killed within the Feb. 28 strike that killed his father.
Alleged behind-the-scenes affect
Mojtaba Khamenei pictured on the annual Quds Day rally in Tehran in Could 2019, one of many few occasions he is been photographed in public through the years.
Rouzbeh Fouladi/Center East Photographs/AFP by way of Getty Photographs
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Rouzbeh Fouladi/Center East Photographs/AFP by way of Getty Photographs
The U.S. Treasury Division imposed sanctions on Mojtaba Khamenei — and his father-in-law — underneath the primary Trump administration in 2019, for what it mentioned was “representing the Supreme Chief in an official capability regardless of by no means being elected or appointed to a authorities place other than work within the workplace of his father.”
The U.S. mentioned the supreme chief had “delegated part of his management obligations to his son.”
Particularly, it mentioned the youthful Khamenei labored carefully with the commander of the Revolutionary Guard and the Basij Resistance Power (a volunteer paramilitary group centered on home safety and suppressing political dissent) “to advance his father’s destabilizing regional ambitions and oppressive home targets.”
That wasn’t the one time Mojtaba Khamenei was accused of quietly influencing Iranian affairs, together with a number of presidential elections.
He’s believed to be behind the sudden rise of hard-line former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2005 and his reelection within the disputed election of 2009, which resulted in large anti-government protests suppressed by safety forces, together with the Basij. One of many chants of pro-reform protesters was: “Want you dying Mojtaba, so you’d by no means be the following chief!”
Former parliamentary speaker Mehdi Karroubi, who ran in each of these elections, wrote letters to the supreme chief in 2005 and 2009 accusing “the grasp’s son” of interference. The supreme chief took concern with that characterization, calling Khamenei “a grasp himself, not a grasp’s son.” Karroubi was positioned underneath home arrest in 2011 for his position in protests over the election outcomes and held for over 14 years and not using a trial or fees.
An unsurprising however controversial decide
Khamenei’s choice is already controversial: The Israeli army warned on social media that he was a goal earlier than he was even chosen, whereas President Trump — who desires to be concerned in selecting Iran’s new chief — referred to as him “unacceptable.”
“They’re losing their time. Khamenei’s son is a light-weight,” Trump instructed Axios final week, earlier than a choice was introduced.
Iran’s defiant selection suggests the street to decision on this battle may very well be lengthy. Crude oil markets reacted accordingly on Sunday, rocketing previous $100 for the primary time since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Khamenei’s choice may very well be unpopular at residence, provided that Iranians had taken to the streets to protest financial circumstances and name for regime change — prompting a lethal authorities crackdown — properly earlier than the present outbreak of combating. It additionally bears a resemblance to a hereditary monarchy, the very system of presidency that revolutionaries overthrew in 1979.
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