Who is Mojtaba Khamenei, selected to replace father as Iran leader?

Mojtaba Khamenei was named to lead Iran on Monday after his father, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was killed in U.S.-Israeli airstrikes.

Mojtaba Khamenei was elected by a body of 88 Iranian clerics known as the Assembly of Experts. Father-to-son succession is traditionally frowned upon in the Shiite Muslim clerical establishment in part due to an intent to separate the government from a hereditary monarchy, which the Iranian revolution overthrew in 1979.

President Trump has already described Mojtaba Khamenei as an “unacceptable” choice.

“Khamenei’s son is unacceptable to me. We want someone that will bring harmony and peace to Iran,” Trump said in an interview with Axios  on Thursday.

Mojtaba Khamenei is believed to be alive and in hiding, after his wife, Zahra Haddad Abdel, was also killed in the strikes.

Mojtaba Khamenei was born in Mashhad, Iran, in 1969, a decade before the Iranian Revolution. Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was ousted from power and Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini took over as the new Islamic Republic as Iran’s first supreme leader in 1979.

The Khamenei family moved to Tehran, and Mojtaba Khamenei joined a division of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to fight in Iran’s war with Iraq from 1987-88.

Months after Khomeini issued a fatwa against the novelist Salman Rushdie in 1989, the supreme leader died and was succeeded by Ali Khamenei. His ascension allowed his son to take control of the family’s wealth and business assets.

Mojtaba Khamenei worked in offices in Tehran while his father ruled the country. He was referred to by U.S. diplomatic cables obtained by WikiLeaks in the late 2000s as “the power behind the robes.” In 2008, he was seen “by a number of regime insiders as a plausible candidate for shared leadership of Iran upon his father’s demise, whether that demise is soon or years in the future,” one cable read.

The United Nations sanctioned Mojtaba Khamenei in 2019, accusing him of working to “advance his father’s destabilizing regional ambitions and oppressive domestic objectives.” He allegedly backed former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s election in 2005 and reelection in 2009.

Candidate Madhi Karroubi accused Mojtaba Khamenei of being “a master’s son” and interfering with the results of both elections.

He is not the only relative of an Iranian supreme leader who was considered in the line of succession to lead the regime.

Hassan Khomeini, Ruhollah Khomeini’s grandson, was seen as a possible leader and could be considered if Mojtaba Khamenei is killed. He is widely seen as a moderate and has not held a role in government. He now works at his grandfather’s mausoleum.

Former President Hassan Rouhani, a moderate who signed the landmark nuclear agreement with the Obama administration that President Trump withdrew from in 2018, is another candidate who could lead Iran as supreme leader. So too are Ayatollah Alireza Arafi, a member of the provisional government council, and Ayatollah Mohammed Mehdi Mirbagheri, a senior cleric on Iran’s Assembly of Experts.

Trump, in the hours after Ali Khamenei was killed, called on Iranians to take control of their government and effectively end the 47-year reign of the Islamic Republic. World leaders and members of Congress praised Ali Khamenei’s death and called for a democratic future in Iran, one that “military force alone will not secure,” as Rep. Yassamin Ansari (D-Ariz.) said.

“I want nothing more than a free Iran and safety and security for innocent Iranians,” Ansari, the only Iranian American member of Congress, wrote on the social platform X on Saturday. “That requires more than force. It requires seriousness, accountability, and a real plan to support the Iranian people in determining their own future.”

The Associated Press contributed.

First published on March 4 at 9:15 a.m. EST

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