DUBAI (Reuters) — Iran’s clerical leadership chose confrontation over compromise in appointing Mojtaba Khamenei to succeed his father, Ali Khamenei, a move regional officials say is a direct rebuke to US President Donald Trump, who had declared the son “unacceptable.”
Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed on February 28 in the opening salvo of the ongoing US-Israeli bombing campaign in Iran, which has responded with missile and drone strikes across the region.
The appointment of Mojtaba as his successor by the Assembly of Experts locks hardliners firmly in control in Tehran — a gamble that could reshape Iran’s war with the US and Israel and reverberate far beyond the Middle East.
“Having Mojtaba take over is the same playbook,” said Alex Vatanka, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute. “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.”
Under Iran’s complex, theocratic system, the supreme leader is the ultimate authority, including over foreign policy and Iran’s nuclear program, as well as guiding the elected president and parliament.
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Analysts say the choice of Mojtaba, a deeply hardline cleric whose wife, mother and other family members were also killed in US–Israeli strikes, sends an unequivocal message: Iran’s leadership has rejected any prospect of compromise to preserve the system and sees no path forward except confrontation, revenge and endurance.
According to insiders, Mojtaba will face immense internal and external strain from a disaffected population and an escalating conflict, but is expected to move swiftly to consolidate power.
This handout picture provided by the office of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (left) shows him during an address in Tehran on February 17, 2026. (Handout / KHAMENEI.IR / AFP); Mojtaba Khamenei, son of Iran’s slain supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, attends a demonstration to mark Jerusalem Day in Tehran, May 31, 2019. (Morteza Nikoubazl/NurPhoto/Reuters)
That will likely mean expanded authority for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), harsher domestic controls and sweeping repression to crush dissent.
“The world will miss the era of his father,” a regional official close to Tehran told Reuters. “Mojtaba will have no choice but to show an iron fist… even if the war ends, there will be severe internal repression.”
That stance comes after months of deepening domestic unrest — the bloodiest since the 1979 Islamic Revolution — that had already weakened the Islamic Republic before the war began.
Iran was grappling with a battered economy, soaring inflation, currency collapse and widening poverty, alongside tightening repression that had fueled public anger and protests — pressures now likely to intensify under wartime rule.
Bleak days ahead
Difficult days lie ahead under Mojtaba, with far tighter internal controls, intensified pressure at home and an even more aggressive, hostile posture abroad, said another Iranian insider familiar with the situation on the ground.
Paul Salem, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, said Mojtaba was not a figure positioned to strike a deal with the United States or pivot diplomatically.
“Nobody emerging now is going to be able to compromise,” Salem said. “This is a hardline choice, made in a hardline moment.”
In the eyes of Iran’s clerics, many of whom famously label America the “Great Satan,” the assassination of Ali Khamenei, the Islamic Republic’s highest religious authority, has elevated him to “martyrdom.”
People hold portraits of Iran’s slain supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as they take part in a demonstration against the US and Israel, amid the US-Israel war with Iran, after Friday prayer in Tehran, Iran, March 6, 2026. (AFP)
Clerics have cast the slain leader as a heroic figure, likening him to Imam Hussein — the Shiite symbol of sacrifice and resistance against oppression.
“Mojtaba is even worse and more hardline than his father,” said Alan Eyre, former US diplomat and Iran specialist, adding that he was the preferred candidate of the Guards. “He’s going to have a lot of revenge to exact.”
That calculus carries risks. Israel has warned that any successor to Khamenei would also be a target, while Trump has said the war may only end once Iran’s military leadership and ruling elite are eliminated.
New leader has long opposed reformists
A powerful cleric, Mojtaba, 56, has long opposed reformist groups advocating engagement with the West. His close ties to senior clerics and the IRGC — which dominates Iran’s security forces and its economy, and facilitates Iran’s regional network of anti-Israel proxies — give him leverage across the state’s political and coercive security institutions.
He amassed influence under his father as a key figure within the security apparatus and the vast business empire it controls, operating for years as Ali Khamenei’s gatekeeper and, in practice, a “mini-supreme leader,” analysts say.
His elevation comes as the US-Israeli campaign against Iran intensifies, with joint strikes hitting fuel depots and other targets inside Iran, while Iranian missiles and drones have struck Gulf states, widening the conflict.
A thick plume of smoke rises from an oil storage facility hit by an Israeli strike late Saturday in Tehran, Iran, March 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
Mojtaba studied under conservative clerics in the seminaries of Qom, the heart of Shiite theological learning.
The US Treasury sanctioned him in 2019, saying he represented the supreme leader in an official capacity despite never holding elected or formal government office.
A Gulf source familiar with regional government thinking said of Mojtaba’s appointment: “This tells Trump and Washington that Iran will not back down, they will fight on until the finish.”
Salem, of the Middle East Institute, likened Iran’s trajectory to Iraq under Saddam Hussein after 1991 or Syria under Bashar al‑Assad after 2012 — governments that survived years of war and isolation but steadily lost control.
“They’re doubling down on the hard line,” Salem said. “Internally, it’s terrible — and deeply destabilizing.”
Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.
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