Mojtaba Khamenei, son of the recently deceased supreme leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, had long been considered a contender for the post, even before an Israeli strike to kill his father and despite the fact that he had never been elected or appointed to a government position, writes the Associated Press.
A secretive figure in the Islamic Republic, Mojtaba Khamenei had not been seen in public in the days following the death of his 86-year-old father. The same airstrike that killed the ayatollah also killed Mojtaba Khamenei's wife, Zahra Haddad Adel.
After his election by the 88-member Assembly of Experts, Mojtaba will now have the final say on Iranian strategy, and the powerful Revolutionary Guard will be accountable to him.
His candidacy may have been indirectly bolstered by US President Donald Trump, who on Thursday described the young Khamenei as unacceptable and said: "They're wasting their time. Khamenei's son is a lightweight. I should have a say in the appointment."
The idea of Mojtaba Khamenei replacing his father as supreme leader has also been met with criticism on the grounds that it could create a theocratic version of the former hereditary monarchy. "The actions" However, his fortunes rose after his father and wife were killed and became martyrs in the eyes of hardliners in the war against America and Israel.
Mojtaba Khamenei was born in Mashhad in 1969, a decade before the 1979 Islamic Revolution. After the fall of the Shah, Khamenei's family moved to Tehran. Mojtaba fought in the Iran-Iraq War with the Habib ibn Mazahir Battalion, a unit of the Revolutionary Guards, some of whose members rose to high positions in the corps' intelligence structures, likely with the support of the Khamenei family.
After his father became supreme leader in 1989, Mojtaba and his family gained access to billions of dollars in business assets belonging to Iranian foundations, fed by state-owned companies and other sources once controlled by the Shah.
American diplomatic cables leaked to WikiLeaks in the late 2000s portrayed the young Khamenei as a hidden power, even passing on allegations that he tapped his own father's phone, played the role of "primary guardian" access to it and forms a base for his own influence in the country.
Mojtaba Khamenei “is widely regarded within the regime as a capable and strong leader and manager who may one day be able to obtain at least a share of the national leadership; his father may also see him in such a light“, says a 2008 diplomatic cable.
The young Khamenei worked closely with the paramilitary Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, its foreign operations wing “Quds“ and the volunteer Basij militia, which violently suppressed protests in January, a US Treasury Department report said.
The US placed him under sanctions in 2019 during President Trump's first term for working "to advance his father's destabilising regional ambitions and oppressive domestic goals".
The supreme leader is at the heart of the complex power structure in Iran's Shiite theocracy and has the final say on all matters affecting the state. He is also the commander-in-chief of the army and the Revolutionary Guard, which was designated a terrorist organization by the US in 2019 and which controls Iran's ballistic missile arsenal.