Mojtaba Khamenei, a son of Iran’s late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has long been considered a contender to the post of the country’s next paramount ruler — even before an Israeli strike killed his father at the start of the war last week and despite the fact he’s has never been elected or appointed to a government position.
A secretive figure within the Islamic Republic, Mojtaba Khamenei has not been seen publicly since Saturday, when the Israeli airstrike targeting the supreme leader’s offices killed his 86-year-old father. Also killed were the younger Khamenei’s wife, Zahra Haddad Adel, who came from a family long associated with the country’s theocracy.
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Khamenei is believed to still be alive and has likely has gone into hiding as American and Israeli airstrikes continue to pound Iran, though state-run Iranian media have not reported on his whereabouts.
Profile of Khamenei’s son rises after airstrike
Mojtaba Khamenei’s name continues to circulate as a possible candidate to replace his father, something that had been criticized in the past as potentially creating a theocratic version of Iran’s former hereditary monarchy.
But now with his father and wife considered by hard-liners as martyrs in the war against America and Israel, Khamenei’s stock likely has risen with the aging clerics of the 88-seat Assembly of Experts who will select the country’s next supreme leader.
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Whoever becomes the leader will gain control of an Iranian military now at war and a stockpile of highly enriched uranium that could be used to build a nuclear weapon — should he choose to decree it.
Khamenei had occupied a similar role to that of Ahmad Khomeini, a son of Iran’s first Supreme Leader Ruhollah Khomeini — “a combination of aide-de-camp, confidant, gatekeeper and power broker,” according to United Against Nuclear Iran, a U.S.-based pressure group.
Born into dissent
Born in 1969 in the city of Mashhad, some 10 years before the 1979 Islamic Revolution that would sweep Iran, Khamenei grew up as his father agitated against Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi of Iran.
An official biography on Ali Khamenei’s life recounts one moment when the shah’s secret police, the SAVAK, broke into their home and beat the cleric. Woken up after, Mojtaba and the rest of Khamenei’s children were told their father was going on vacation.
“But I told them, ‘There is no need to lie.’ I told them the truth,” the elder Khamenei was quoted as saying.
After the fall of the shah, Khamenei’s family moved to Tehran, Iran’s capital. Khamenei would go on to fight in the Iran-Iraq war with the Habib ibn Mazahir Battalion, a division of Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard that would see several of its members ascend to powerful intelligence positions within the force — likely with the backing of the Khamenei family.
His father became supreme leader in 1989 — and soon Mojtaba Khamenei and his family had access to the billions of dollars and business assets spread across Iran’s many bonyads, or foundations funded from state industries and other wealth once held by the shah.
