{"id":329101,"date":"2026-03-04T21:45:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-04T21:45:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/329101\/"},"modified":"2026-03-04T21:45:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-04T21:45:08","slug":"who-is-mojtaba-khamenei-the-possible-next-leader-of-iran-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/329101\/","title":{"rendered":"Who is Mojtaba Khamenei, the possible next leader of Iran? \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Senior clerics responsible for selecting Iran<\/a>\u2019s next supreme leader met on Tuesday to deliberate, and the son of the slain former leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei<\/a>, emerged as the clear front-runner, according to three Iranian officials familiar with the deliberations.<\/p>\n

The officials said the clerics were considering announcing the son, Mojtaba Khamenei, would be his father\u2019s successor as early as Wednesday morning but that some had expressed reservations, fearing that it could expose him as a target for the United States and Israel<\/a>. They spoke on condition of anonymity.<\/p>\n

Mojtaba Khamenei has been chosen despite a low clerical status \u2013 the post is religious as well as political. <\/p>\n

His son, wife and mother were killed in Saturday\u2019s US-Israeli strikes along with the supreme leader. <\/p>\n

The 88-member assembly of experts are reported to have favoured him over more likely candidates, including national security chief Ali Larijani, chief justice Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei and Guardian Council member Alireza Arafi. <\/p>\n

Mojtaba, (57), is the preferred candidate of Iran\u2019s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). He served in the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq War and in 2009 assumed control of the Basij militia, which suppressed mass protests over the contested election to the presidency of hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. <\/p>\n

[\u00a0Iran sends drones and missiles across the Gulf as up to 2,000 Irish seek route homeOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

\"MojtabaMojtaba Khamenei (C), the son of the Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Photograph: Rouzbeh Fouladi\/Middle East Images\/AFP via Getty Images <\/p>\n

Born in Mashhad, Mojtaba Khamenei is Ali Khamenei\u2019s second-eldest child. He lived for seven years in northwest Iran, where he received his early education. After completing secondary school, he studied Islamic theology with his father and another respected scholar, Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, who served as Iran\u2019s chief justice from 1999-2009. <\/p>\n

Mujtaba Khamenei concluded his studies to become a cleric in the Shia seminary in the sect\u2019s holy city of Qom. <\/p>\n

He is a hojatoleslam, a middle rank several levels below ayatollah. <\/p>\n

Although he has not attained high status in the Shia clerical hierarchy, Mojtaba Khamenei has been teaching theology in the Qom Seminary while assuming a top politico-paramilitary role, aiding his father\u2019s repressive domestic regime, and destabilising regional activities. <\/p>\n

He has been sanctioned by the US since 2019 for undertaking operations without serving in an official post and collaborating with the IRGC\u2019s Quds branch. This group has conducted covert external intelligence as well as financing and training the Pakistani Taliban in Pakistan, Hizbullah in Lebanon, Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Palestine, and the Popular Mobilisation Forces militia in Iraq. <\/p>\n

He is also said to be a wealthy businessman, controlling billions of dollars. Bloomberg reported in January that since 2011 he has used intermediaries to move oil revenue assets outside Iran. Iranian banker Ali Ansari, who was sanctioned by Britain last October, was identified as owner or director of some of these transactions. The Financial Times reported the European property portfolio alone is valued at \u20ac460.5 million. Additional reporting \u2013 The New York Times.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Iran war: How Israel and the US are co-ordinating their attackOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Senior clerics responsible for selecting Iran\u2019s next supreme leader met on Tuesday to deliberate, and the son of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":329102,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,11829,3410,150432,43,40,38,41,39,115],"class_list":["post-329101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-iran","tag-israel","tag-israel-iran-conflict","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=329101"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329101\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/329102"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=329101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=329101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=329101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}