Mojtaba Khamenei, son of Iran’s late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has long been seen as a potential successor despite never holding elected office or an official government post.
His profile rose even before last week’s Israeli strike killed his father, thrusting Iran’s leadership succession into uncertainty.
A secretive figure within the Islamic Republic, Mojtaba has not been seen publicly since Saturday, when the attack on the supreme leader’s offices also claimed the life of his wife, Zahra Haddad Adel, a scion of a family closely tied to Iran’s theocracy.
Though his exact whereabouts remain unknown, he is believed to be in hiding as American and Israeli airstrikes continue across Iran. State media have remained silent on his status.
Despite past criticism that elevating him could turn Iran into a theocratic version of a hereditary monarchy, Mojtaba Khamenei remains a key name in speculation over the country’s next paramount ruler.
With his father and wife now considered martyrs by hard-liners in the war against the United States and Israel, Khamenei's standing likely has risen among the aging clerics of the 88-seat Assembly of Experts, who will select the country’s next supreme leader.
Whoever becomes leader will gain control of an Iranian military now at war and a stockpile of highly enriched uranium that could be used to build a nuclear weapon, should he choose to decree it.
Khamenei occupied a role similar to that of Ahmad Khomeini, son of Iran's first Supreme Leader Ruhollah Khomeini, described as “a combination of aide-de-camp, confidant, gatekeeper and power broker,” according to United Against Nuclear Iran, a U.S.-based pressure group.
U.S. President Donald Trump may have indirectly boosted his candidacy by criticizing Khamenei in an interview with Axios on Thursday and insisting he be involved in selecting Iran's next leader.
“They are wasting their time. Khamenei’s son is a lightweight. I have to be involved in the appointment,” Trump said, referring to his operation that saw the U.S. military seize former Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro.
“Khamenei’s son is unacceptable to me,” Trump added. “We want someone that will bring harmony and peace to Iran.”
Born in 1969 in Mashhad, about 10 years before the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Khamenei grew up as his father agitated against Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.
An official biography of Ali Khamenei recounts one moment when the shah's secret police, SAVAK, broke into their home and beat the cleric. Woken afterward, Mojtaba and his siblings were told their father was going on vacation.
“But I told them, ‘There is no need to lie.’ I told them the truth,” the elder Khamenei said.
After the fall of the Shah, the family moved to Tehran. Mojtaba Khamenei later fought in the Iran-Iraq war with the Habib ibn Mazahir Battalion, a division of the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard that would see several members rise to powerful intelligence positions, likely with the Khamenei family's backing.
His father became supreme leader in 1989, and Mojtaba and his family gained access to the billions of dollars and business assets spread across Iran's bonyads, or foundations, funded from state industries and other wealth once held by the shah.
His own power grew alongside his father’s as he worked within the offices in downtown Tehran. U.S. diplomatic cables published by WikiLeaks in the late 2000s referred to Mojtaba Khamenei as “the power behind the robes.” One cable alleged he tapped his father’s phone, served as his “principal gatekeeper” and was forming his own power base within the country.
“Khamenei is widely viewed within the regime as a capable and forceful leader and manager who may someday succeed to at least a share of national leadership; his father may also see him in that light,” a 2008 cable said, noting his lack of theological qualifications and age.
“Mojtaba is, however, due to his skills, wealth and unmatched alliances, reportedly seen by a number of regime insiders as a plausible candidate for shared leadership of Iran upon his father’s demise, whether that demise is soon or years in the future,” it said.
Khamenei has worked closely with Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, including commanders of its expeditionary Quds Force and the all-volunteer Basij, which violently suppressed nationwide protests in January, the U.S. Treasury has said.
The United States sanctioned him in 2019 during Trump’s first term for working to “advance his father’s destabilizing regional ambitions and oppressive domestic objectives.”
That includes allegations that Khamenei, from behind the scenes, supported the election of hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2005 and his disputed re-election in 2009, which sparked the Green Movement protests.
Mahdi Karroubi, a presidential candidate in 2005 and 2009, denounced Khamenei as “a master’s son” and alleged he interfered in both votes. His father reportedly said at the time that Mojtaba was “a master himself, not a master’s son.”
There has been only one other transfer of power in the office of supreme leader, the paramount decision-maker since the Islamic Revolution. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini died at age 86 after leading Iran through the eight-year war with Iraq.
The new leader will assume power after a 12-day war with Israel as the United States and Israel seek to eliminate Iran’s nuclear threat and military power, hoping the Iranian people will rise against the theocracy.
The supreme leader sits at the heart of Iran’s complex Shiite theocracy, with final say over all matters of state.
He also serves as commander in chief of the military and the Revolutionary Guard, which the United States designated a terrorist organization in 2019 and which Ali Khamenei empowered during his rule.
The Guard has led the self-described “Axis of Resistance,” a series of groups across the Middle East aimed at countering the U.S. and Israel. It also controls extensive wealth, holdings and Iran’s ballistic missile arsenal.
