Iran has appointed a successor to the late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei.
Mojtaba Khamenei, 56, is set to replace his father in the top role, following a meeting of the deliberative Assembly of Experts on Sunday, more than a week after the elder Khamenei was killed in an air strike.
“By a decisive vote, the Assembly of Experts, appointed Ayatollah Seyyed Mojtaba Hosseini Khamenei as the third Leader of the sacred system of the Islamic Republic of Iran,” the assembly confirmed just after midnight.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), behind the brutal crackdowns on protesters, said they were ready to follow the new supreme leader Mojtaba in a statement.
Ayatollah Mohsen Heidari Alekasir, a member of the council, said earlier on Sunday that a candidate had been chosen on the late Khamenei’s guidance that Iran’s spiritual leader should be “hated by the enemy”.
The decision comes despite Donald Trump’s insistence this week that he would have to have a say in the appointment, following Iran’s “unconditional surrender” to the United States.
Trump compared the situation to the ousting of Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela. He also said Khamenei’s son was “unacceptable to me”.
Iran’s parliament speaker Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf said late on Sunday that following Mojtaba was “religious and national duty”.
He said he the new leader “is indeed the shadow of our martyred leader and will guide the ship of the revolution with strength on the path of the Imams of the revolution towards a prosperous, advanced, and unified Iran.”
Khamenei will step into the role having never held a position in Iran’s government. He had attained the clerical rank of Hojjatoleslam, a notch below that of his late father.
Mojtaba’s appointment signifies that the hardliners are still firmly in charge in Iran. He has opposed reformers seeking to engage the West in talks to limit the country’s nuclear programme.
Critics have said Mojtaba lacks the clerical credentials to be supreme leader, but he has remained in the frame, particularly after another leading candidate for the role – the former President Ebrahim Raisi – died in a helicopter crash in 2024.
The US imposed sanctions on the Mojtaba Khamenei in 2019, saying he represented the supreme leader in “an official capacity despite never being elected or appointed to a government position” aside from working in his father’s office.
He is reported to own over 11 luxury properties in the UK through shell companies, according to a Bloomberg investigation. The buildings are valued at over $138m (£103m), including one on Bishop’s Avenue in north London, also known as Billionaire’s Row.
Alex Vatanka, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, told Reuters: “Having Mojtaba take over is the same playbook.”
“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.”
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