Mojtaba
Iran names Mojtaba Khamenei as Supreme Leader, succeeds killed father, defies Trump
TEHRAN — Iran’s clerical leadership has appointed Mojtaba Khamenei to succeed his father, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, as Supreme Leader following the elder Khamenei’s death in a U.S.-Israeli strike now in its second week, a move regional officials say amounts to a direct rejection of U.S. President Donald Trump’s demand that the son be barred from power.
The emergency session of the Assembly of Experts, which confirmed Mojtaba as the Islamic Republic’s next supreme authority, locks hardliners firmly in control in Tehran at a moment of escalating war with the United States and Israel — a gamble that could reshape the conflict and reverberate far beyond the Middle East.
Trump had declared in recent days that any successor to Iran’s leadership would need Washington’s approval to remain in power, warning that anyone emerging without U.S. backing “is not going to last long.”
The president told ABC News that the United States intends to ensure Iran’s leadership does not pose a long-term nuclear threat and that “everything is on the table,” including potential special forces operations to secure Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile.
“Having Mojtaba take over is the same playbook,” said Alex Vatanka, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute. “It’s a big humiliation for the United States to carry out an operation of this scale, risk so much, and end up killing an 86-year-old man, only to have him replaced by his hardline son.”
Mojtaba Khamenei, 56, is a deeply hardline cleric whose wife, mother, and other family members were also killed in the strikes that eliminated his father.
Analysts say his elevation sends an unequivocal message: Iran’s leadership has rejected any prospect of compromise to preserve the system and sees no path forward except confrontation, revenge, and endurance.
Under Iran’s complex theocratic system, the supreme leader is the ultimate authority, holding final say over foreign policy, Iran’s nuclear program, and the direction of the elected president and parliament.
Mojtaba’s appointment now places that authority in the hands of a figure long viewed as his father’s gatekeeper and, in practice, a “mini-supreme leader” who has operated for years as a key figure within the security apparatus and the vast business empire controlled by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
His close ties to senior clerics and the IRGC — which dominates Iran’s security forces and its economy — give him leverage across the state’s political and coercive security institutions.
The U.S. Treasury sanctioned Mojtaba in 2019, noting that he represented the supreme leader in an official capacity despite never holding elected or formal government office.
According to insiders familiar with the situation, Mojtaba faces immense internal and external strain from a disaffected population and an escalating conflict, but is expected to move swiftly to consolidate power. That will likely mean expanded authority for the IRGC, harsher domestic controls, and sweeping repression to crush dissent.
“The world will miss the era of his father,” a regional official close to Tehran said. “Mojtaba will have no choice but to show an iron fist… even if the war ends, there will be severe internal repression.”
That stance comes after months of deepening domestic unrest — the bloodiest since the 1979 Islamic Revolution — that had already weakened the Islamic Republic before the war began. Iran was grappling with a battered economy, soaring inflation, currency collapse, and widening poverty, alongside tightening repression that had fueled public anger and protests — pressures now likely to intensify under wartime rule.
Another Iranian insider familiar with conditions on the ground said difficult days lie ahead under Mojtaba, with far tighter internal controls, intensified pressure at home, and an even more aggressive, hostile posture abroad.
Paul Salem, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, said Mojtaba was not a figure positioned to strike a deal with the United States or pivot diplomatically.
“Nobody emerging now is going to be able to compromise,” Salem said. “This is a hardline choice, made in a hardline moment.”
In the eyes of Iran’s clerics, many of whom famously label America the “Great Satan,” the assassination of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei — the Islamic Republic’s highest religious authority — has elevated him to martyrdom. Clerics have cast the slain leader as a heroic figure, likening him to Imam Hussein, the Shi’ite symbol of sacrifice and resistance against oppression.
“Mojtaba is even worse and more hardline than his father,” said Alan Eyre, a former U.S. diplomat and Iran specialist, adding that he was the preferred candidate of the Guards. “He’s going to have a lot of revenge to exact.”
That calculus carries risks. Israel has warned that any successor to Khamenei would also be a target, while Trump has suggested the war may only end once Iran’s military leadership and ruling elite are eliminated.
The elevation comes as the U.S.-Israeli campaign against Iran intensifies, with joint strikes hitting fuel depots and other targets inside Iran, while Iranian missiles and drones have struck Gulf states, widening the conflict.
A Gulf source familiar with regional government thinking said of Mojtaba’s appointment: “This tells Trump and Washington that Iran will not back down, they will fight on until the finish.”
Mojtaba studied under conservative clerics in the seminaries of Qom, the heart of Shi’ite theological learning, and holds the clerical rank of Hojjatoleslam — a mid-ranking position that analysts say could evolve as he consolidates power.
Salem likened Iran’s trajectory to Iraq under Saddam Hussein after 1991 or Syria under Bashar al-Assad after 2012 — governments that survived years of war and isolation but steadily lost control.
“They’re doubling down on the hard line,” Salem said. “Internally, it’s terrible — and deeply destabilising.”
Trump, meanwhile, has not ruled out supporting a potential leader with ties to Iran’s former ruling structure if such an individual could ensure stability. “There are numerous people that could qualify,” he said, while maintaining that Iran’s ambitions to expand its influence across the Middle East have been halted.
“They are a paper tiger,” Trump said. “They weren’t a paper tiger a week ago, I’ll tell you.”
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