Mojtaba Khamenei’s Long Road to Power

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Mojtaba Khamenei’s accession to the post of Supreme Leader was a virtual certainty—following decades of careful political maneuvering by him and his father.

After the United States and Israel killed longtime Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei on the first day of the ongoing war, the Islamic Republic’s Assembly of Experts quickly named his most prominent son, Mojtaba Khamenei, as the country’s new supreme leader. The younger Khamenei, aged 56, has not been seen since the beginning of the conflict, although Tehran has released several written statements attributed to him.

Before his death, Ali Khamenei had four sons—Mostafa, Mojtaba, Masoud, and Meysam—all of whom were mainly involved in the Khamenei household. However, the most prominent of them was Mojtaba, who was born on September 8, 1969, in the city of Mashhad, under the rule of the Shah. Mojtaba Khamenei grew up as a cleric, studying religious sciences at the Qom Seminary under Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, Mohammad-Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi, and Lotfollah Safi Golpaygani.

Mojtaba Khamenei’s Succession Was Years in the Making

Mojtaba Khamenei’s competition to succeed his father began long before the current outbreak of war. It was a campaign long in the making—one that even resulted in disputes within the Iranian elite class, as some regime insiders questioned whether Iran had reverted to a monarchical system. Eagle-eyed observers noted that as the elder Khamenei’s health declined and his public appearances became fewer, the Qom seminary’s news agency began to use the title “Ayatollah”—denoting a high-ranking Shi’a religious official—for his son for the first time. As Mojtaba waited in the wings, many of Ali Khamanei’s close associates, including influential clerics like Mehdi Tajzadeh, the Friday Prayer Leader of Baharestan in Isfahan Province, praised Mojtaba and compared him to the second Imam of the Shiites, defending his succession after his father.

To understand how Mojtaba reached the heights of Iranian leadership, one must go back to the mid-1980s, when he enlisted in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), then on the front lines of the Iran-Iraq War. The younger Khamenei joined the “Habib ibn Muzahir” battalion, one of the main battalions of the IRGC’s 27th Mohammad Rasulullah Division. At that time, the elder Khamenei was serving as the Iranian president, but was not particularly popular among many commanders and soldiers. The balance of sympathy inside the system leaned more toward Mir-Hossein Mousavi, then prime minister, who enjoyed the backing of then-Supreme Leader Ruhollah Khomeini. But it was in this environment that Mojtaba began building the ties that would later turn into one of the most important informal networks in the Islamic Republic.

The “Habib Battalion Circle” was a product of that war and the postwar period. Over time, members of Mojtaba’s circle gained influence across intelligence,........

© The National Interest