Iran has named Mojtaba Khamenei, the son of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, as the country’s new Supreme Leader following the killing of his father in US-Israeli strikes on February 28, according to an announcement by state-run media early Monday.
Mojtaba was selected by Iran’s Assembly of Experts, an 88-member body of elected senior clerics responsible for choosing the country’s supreme leader.
The Assembly of Experts has chosen a new leader only once before since the Islamic Republic was established in 1979. That decision came when Ali Khamenei was selected after the death of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini more than three decades ago.
The appointment has already drawn a response from US President Donald Trump, who said on Thursday that he must be “involved in the appointment” of Iran’s next leader and described the choice of Khamenei’s son as “unacceptable.”
The 56-year-old Mojtaba Khamenei is the second son of the late supreme leader. He is widely seen as influential within Iran’s political system and is known to have strong links with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and its Basij volunteer paramilitary force.
Despite this influence, Mojtaba is not a high-ranking cleric and does not hold an official position in the government.
The United States sanctioned Mojtaba Khamenei in 2019, with the US Treasury accusing him of working closely with the commander of the IRGC-Quds Force and the Basij to advance what it described as his father’s “destabilizing regional ambitions and oppressive domestic objectives.”
According to an Israeli source familiar with the matter, Israel targeted Mojtaba in a strike last week, although officials believe he was injured but survived the attack.
Earlier, Tribune Online reports that the United States President, Donald Trump, has said Iran’s next supreme leader may not remain in power for long if the individual does not receive approval from the United States.
Trump made the remark on Sunday during an interview with ABC News, as discussions continue in Iran over the selection of a new supreme leader.
“He’s going to have to get approval from us,” the president told ABC News. “If he doesn’t get approval from us he’s not going to last long. We want to make sure that we don’t have to go back every 10 years, when you don’t have a president like me that’s not going to do it.”
He added, “I don’t want people to have to go back in five years and have to do the same thing again or worse let them have a nuclear weapon.”
