Iran’s new untested leader faces an existential battlepublished at 05:39 GMT
05:39 GMT
Lyse Doucet
Chief international correspondent
Image source, Reuters
A leader who has never been fully tested takes the helm in Iran when its theocracy faces its greatest test in five decades.
Continuity and connections have pulled Mojtaba Khamenei, 56, to the top after the assassination of his father, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in the first salvos of this war.
But Iran’s third supreme leader since its 1979 revolution takes charge as the Islamic Republic confronts an existential battle.
For those who still mourn the loss of the many thousands killed in that crackdown on those protests, a harsh, hardline regime seems set to become even harsher.
Mojtaba Khamenei worked for decades in his father’s shadow; he knows all the details about how the deep state works when it confronts external threats and internal upheaval.
And this war is no longer just a political fight; it’s intensely personal. It’s also about revenge.
Mojtaba Khamenei lost not just his father in the Israeli strike on the supreme leader’s compound, but also his mother, Mansoureh Khojasteh Bagherzadeh, his wife Zahra Haddad-Adel, as well as a son, on that fateful Saturday morning.
Trump is warning that Mojtaba Khamenei “won’t last long”. He is in Israel’s sights too, with Defence Minister Israel Katz calling him “an unequivocal target”.
So Khamenei may still remain in the shadows for a while. It will deepen the mystery around this reclusive cleric.