Tel Aviv (Web Desk): Israeli media outlets have reported that Mojtaba Khamenei, the son of Iran’s current Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, has been selected as the country’s next Supreme Leader.
According to these reports, the committee responsible for choosing the successor has approved Mojtaba Khamenei’s name, and a formal announcement of his appointment is expected within the next few hours.
However, Iranian media have presented a different account, stating that deliberations over the nomination of a new Supreme Leader are still underway and that a final decision could take approximately a week.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has also indicated that the official declaration of the new Supreme Leader will be made only after the burial of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Mojtaba Khamenei is regarded as a prominent figure within Iran’s political and religious establishment. He is the second son of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and is reported to have participated in the Iran-Iraq War.
His name has also surfaced in connection with the security apparatus involved in suppressing protests that followed the 2009 presidential election.
For years, he has been widely viewed as one of the most influential of the Supreme Leader’s sons and a potential successor.
Born in 1969 in Mashhad, Mojtaba Khamenei spent the first seven years of his life in the northwestern Iranian cities of Sardasht and Mahabad.
In 2004, he married Zahra Haddad-Adel. Politically, he has been considered aligned with former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. In 2019, the United States (US) imposed sanctions on him.