Mojtaba Khamenei, centre, the son of former Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, at a Quds Day rally in Tehran, in May, 2019.ROUZBEH FOULADI/Getty Images
The war in Iran has been cruel to Mojtaba Khamenei. The question is whether the hard-liner will be cruel to his own people if he becomes supreme leader, as widely anticipated.
His father, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s last supreme leader, was assassinated in his office compound by a joint Israel-U.S. military operation in the early hours of Saturday, Feb. 28 – the first day of the war. The Tehran government said Mojtaba Khamenei’s mother, wife and son were also killed in the same attack.
Mojtaba’s whereabouts are not known; he has not been seen since the strikes on his family. There are rumours that he is wounded. But he may be forced out of hiding soon, if only to prove that he is alive and ready to embrace the most crucial job of his life.
In the past few days, dozens of reports have said Mojtaba, 56, is the top candidate to replace his father, though there are thought to be other contenders. On Wednesday, Iran’s semi-official Mehr news agency quoted Ahmad Khatami, a member of the Assembly of Experts, as saying, “Leadership options have been identified, and we are close to selecting the leader.”
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.
The Associated Press
The assembly is the clerical body of some 88 elders that selects the supreme leader in a secret vote akin to the Roman Catholic Church’s papal conclave. Iran’s Fars news agency, which is allegedly independent but closely linked to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), as Mojtaba is, had a similar message. The decision to name the new leader would likely be made next week, Fars said.
An Iranian economist, who did not want to be identified for fear of retribution in a state that suffers no criticism from its citizens, said the average Iranian is dreading Mojtaba’s arrival. “He’s young, aggressive and probably the most hated man in Iran,” he said. “His appointment would signal that Iran’s repressive past will live on.”
Iranians were no fans of his father, either, who apparently gave the order in January to quell an uprising by killing thousands of citizens. Human Rights Activists in Iran, in a report released in late February, put the death toll at no fewer than 7,000.
Mojtaba, Ali Khamenei’s second son, is notoriously private but considered highly influential. He grew up in northwest Iran, studied Islamic theology and served in the Iran-Iraq war, which began with Iraq’s invasion of the Islamic Republic in 1980 and ended with a UN-brokered ceasefire in 1988, when he was in his late teens.
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It is during the war that he is thought to have formed strong connections to the IRGC, which was formed in the wake of the 1979 Iranian Revolution and is charged with protecting the revolution’s Islamic ideals, by force if necessary, and guarding its nuclear assets.
The IRGC is often described as an “elite” military force, conservative in nature. It reports directly to the supreme leader. It has been designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S., Canada and the European Union. Iranians assume that Mojtaba is, in effect, the leader of the IRGC and also exerts strong influence over Hezbollah, the Iranian proxy in Lebanon that is once again at war with Israel.
Mojtaba is widely considered anti-reformist and reportedly was a key figure in ordering the crackdown on anti-government protesters in June, 2009. The mass protests were triggered by the re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, an ally of Mojtaba’s, in an election that opposition candidates said was rigged.
In recent years, as his father grew frail, Iranians believe Mojtaba became the shadow supreme leader. He also became exceedingly wealthy, with extensive overseas real estate holdings, including properties in London, where he was occasionally spotted, paid for with Iranian oil revenue. Iran is one of OPEC’s biggest producers, or was before the war, and has the world’s fourth-largest proven reserves.
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A year-long investigation by Bloomberg, published in January, said “his financial power has embraced everything from Persian Gulf shipping to Swiss bank accounts and British luxury property worth in excess of 100 million pounds. … Together, the web of firms has helped Khamenei to channel funds – by some estimates in the billions of dollars – into Western markets, despite U.S. sanctions imposed on him in 2019.”
It’s not known why the Assembly of Experts is leaning toward Mojtaba, though the Iranian economist who spoke to The Globe said Mojtaba is known as a “pragmatist,” meaning he should have realistic expectations about the war and its outcome. The economist said Mojtaba must know that “revenge” for having lost his family members cannot possibly mean an Iranian victory against the combined might of Israel and the U.S.
“Revenge for Mojtaba would merely mean the survival of the Islamic Republic,” he said.
Vali Nasr, an Iranian-American academic and professor at Johns Hopkins University, said on social media that “Iran is facing qualitatively superior militaries, so the strategy is to test their will by expanding the battlefield, complicating the war and increasing the danger to the world economy.”
Israel seems bound to prevent the “revenge” scenario from happening. In a social media statement Wednesday, Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz threatened to assassinate any leader chosen to succeed Ali Khamenei “no matter his name or where he hides.”
If Mojtaba is elected supreme leader, and makes a public appearance, it is bound to be brief and probably underground.