Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited
by Leonid Tsukanov
[REGNUM] Ten days after the death of Iran's Supreme Leader (Rahbar), Ali Khamenei, the period of "interregnum" officially ended. The Council of Experts, comprised of 88 authoritative theologians of the Islamic Republic, declared 57-year-old Mojtaba Khamenei —the late leader's son and one of the power brokers of regional politics— as Rahbar.
The appointment was a bombshell. Partly because Mojtaba's lifestyle means Tehran's opponents have almost no information about him. This means they have no idea where Khamenei Jr. will lead the country.
A SPEAKING NICKNAME
For a long time, the name Mojtaba, the second son of Iran's supreme leader, was not widely known outside the country. A young cleric (by the standards of others close to him) and a professor at the Qom seminary, he rarely participated in public ceremonies and gave no interviews to foreign media.
During his father's business trips around the country, Mojtaba always kept his distance, avoiding cameras and obligingly letting more media-friendly and, as it then seemed, influential courtiers go first.
Western intelligence agencies observing the rise of Khamenei's regime saw no leadership potential in him and lamented that he was only a "pale shadow" of his older brother, Mostafa, a zealous cleric and supporter of "tightening the screws" who died under mysterious circumstances two years before Khamenei's father ascended to the top post.
| Ah hah! I wondered what had happened to him. Mysterious, eh? Will it remain mysterious if young Mojtaba really takes the reins, or will he choose to reveal all? |
However, in practice, Mojtaba proved to be a much more energetic courtier than those around him believed. For over two decades, he influenced the country's domestic and foreign policy, while remaining a low-profile figure.
Among Iranian politicians, he earned the telling nickname "Agha" ("Master"), who, despite his youth, was able to influence political affairs independently, without hiding behind the authority of his father and other high-ranking officials.
The apogee of the "young master's" influence is considered to be the mid-2000s, when Mojtaba twice helped bring to power the ultra-conservative President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who chose a course of maximum escalation with the West and advocated the creation of nuclear weapons.
Then the fame of Khamenei Jr. spread far beyond the country's borders, and in the United States they began talking about the formation of a "fundamentally new threat" in the Middle East in the Islamic Republic.
However, the alliance didn't last long. In 2013, at the end of his second presidential term, Ahmadinejad attempted to accuse his patron of embezzlement, and their alliance collapsed. A year later, Khamenei Jr. was briefly arrested on charges of plotting, along with a group of intelligence officers, an assassination attempt on his father.
Although both cases fell apart during the preliminary investigation, Mojtaba learned his lesson well. Once the furor died down, he retreated into the shadows for more than a decade, while remaining a key decision-maker within Iran's state system.
UNEXPECTED TRIUMPH
His name returned to the headlines in June 2025, when the Supreme Leader, concerned about Israeli attacks, decided to draw up a list of potential successors, which presumably included Mojtaba.
However, until recently, many considered Khamenei Jr.'s appointment to Iran's highest post unlikely. This was in part because Mojtaba, despite his status as a veteran of behind-the-scenes political games, held a modest clerical rank, at least three steps short of the top, making rapid career advancement virtually impossible.
In this respect, he was surpassed by many political and religious figures who were previously close to Khamenei.
Moreover, Western observers were confident that neither the theologians, offended by the former rahbar, nor the military elites, eager to redistribute spheres of influence, would allow the continuation of the “Khamenei dynasty.”
Both of them, in addition to “spiritual incompatibility,” could accuse the supporters of Mojtaba’s appointment of “shahish habits” and attempts to revive the principle of succession to the throne under the guise of continuity.
Such a formulation of the issue could well lead to a “purge of counter-revolutionary elements” in high Iranian offices, which would not add to Iran’s strength during a period of active conflict with Israel and the United States.
Therefore, in the informal ranking of successors, compiled on the basis of leaks from Tehran, he never rose above third place, behind not only the other “august heir,” the grandson of the leader of the Islamic Revolution, Hassan Khomeini, but also Alireza Arafi, a theologian and advisor to the former Rahbar, appointed “acting supreme leader” in early March.
The best Mojtaba could hope for under the current circumstances was the presidency. And even then, not until 2028.
However, the exact opposite happened: at the crucial moment, the candidacy of Khamenei Jr. was supported by all of Iran's elites. Not a single theologian or general dared to criticize the Council's decision.
The "Young Master" has become Iran's new supreme leader.
RELIANCE ON THE IRGC
Mojtaba's candidacy was supported not only by his relationship with the Supreme Leader, who ruled the country for nearly four decades, but also by his strong comradely relations with the country's military elite—the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), one of the pillars of official Tehran.
Among Mojtaba's close friends was Qasem Soleimani, commander of the IRGC's elite Quds Force and one of Iran's modern pantheons of martyred heroes.
Khamenei Jr. helped Soleimani diversify the financing of the rapidly strengthening system of proxy groups (the so-called Axis of Resistance) in the Middle East and adjacent regions, including by attracting for these purposes the “shell” companies he created in European countries, Canada, and the Arabian monarchies.
As a result, key pro-Iranian forces had a source of support even during the period when American financiers, as they themselves stated, “cut off the air” for Iranian capital in the Middle East.
At Mojtaba's request, Soleimani was also awarded the Order of Zulfikar, Iran's highest military decoration. The award was presented to the commander several months before his death in Iraq in a US airstrike in January 2020.
After the death of his comrade, Khamenei Jr. took on the unofficial care of the "students of Soleimani"—promising IRGC officers who were part of the Quds Force chief's inner circle—and helped them rise to key leadership positions within the structure, pushing aside less loyal military clans.
Moreover, according to some reports, it was Mojtaba who convinced his father not to launch a witch hunt and not to remove the IRGC military advisers in Iraq and Lebanon who had allowed the plot against Soleimani, thereby saving many promising commanders from being overthrown.
The decision, perceived at the court as a sign of weakness at the time, played into Tehran's hands just three years later, when IRGC advisers, grateful for the rescue, made every effort to paralyze Israel's actions in the region and weaken it before the strikes on Iran in June 2025.
Partly due to the combination played out between Mojtaba and Soleimani, a sign of equality was established, which determined the high loyalty of the IRGC generals to the new Rahbar.
THREATS FROM OPPONENTS
The appointment of Mojtaba Khamenei as Supreme Leader visibly disconcerted his opponents—they clearly had not expected the interregnum in the Islamic Republic to last so short a time, and so they had little time to take preemptive measures.
Over the past ten days, Israel and the United States have failed to eliminate a single theologian potentially aspiring to the post of Rahbar or disrupt the vote of the venerable elders. However, they did issue a "final warning" to the Council of Experts by storming the meeting hall on the eve of the next vote.
Ultimately, as the Pentagon venomously complains, the blows and threats had an asymmetrical effect: they dampened the ardor of the arguing theologians and helped Iran “exchange” the old Khamenei for the young one.
At the same time, the likelihood of Iran changing course under the new Rahbar remains questionable. Mojtaba's biography contains many blank spots, making his psychological and political profile unclear to his adversaries.
The White House still can't figure out whether the "young master" is a technocrat, a reactionary, or a supporter of the Islamic Republic's "special path." The West hasn't forgotten Khamenei Jr.'s alliance with Ahmadinejad and the radical statements about "nuclear retaliation against enemies" made in the early 2000s, but it's not certain that the new Supreme Leader hasn't "outgrown" these ideas.
Hence the emphatically negative position: the White House declares that they “a priori don’t like” Iran’s new leader, and Israel has habitually threatened Mojtaba with “the fate of his father.”
However, neither side has yet made any attempt to approach him, partly out of fear that the IRGC, whose position within Iran has strengthened exponentially over the past year, will avenge the new Rahbar no less zealously than the previous one.
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