He’s referred to as a person within the shadows of Iranian politics. But Mojtaba Khamenei has a formidable affect over a rustic that infrequently sees or hears him.
For years, the son of Iran’s ideal chief has been purported to be a possible candidate to be successful his father, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
That hypothesis has grown with the demise of Iran’s president, Ebrahim Raisi, who many analysts mentioned used to be being groomed to interchange the ideal chief, who’s 85. Mr. Raisi’s demise in a helicopter strike on Sunday is not going to simplest cause unused presidential elections. It might additionally shift the dynamics across the number of Ayatollah Khamenei’s alternative.
“When people started talking about Mojtaba as a potential successor in 2009, I considered it a cheap rumor,” mentioned Arash Azizi, a coach at Clemson College who specializes in Iran. “But it’s not that anymore. It’s very clear now that he is a remarkable figure. And he’s remarkable because he’s been almost entirely invisible in the public eye.”
But a rising quantity inside of Iran’s political status quo have begun to publicly endorse him, added Mr. Azizi.
Mr. Khamenei, 55, is the second one son of the ayatollah’s six kids. A conservative hard-liner, he grew up within the clerical and political elite of the Islamic Republic, established in 1979, and next fostered ties throughout the tough Modern Guards. Nowadays, he’s believed to play games a important function in working his father’s place of work.
However many Iran professionals brush aside the concept that the ayatollah’s personal son may substitute him as a threat to the device.
Because the 1979 revolution deposed Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, a mini team of Shiite clerics that run Iran have held way more energy than elected officers. However a foundational concept of the Islamic Republic used to be that it ended hereditary rule.
“If the supreme leader turns into a hereditary system, what does that mean? It means the system is dead,” mentioned Mohammad Ali Shabani, an Iran analyst and writer of Amwaj, an isolated on-line media outlet that makes a speciality of Iran, Iraq and the Arabian Peninsula.
Mojtaba Khamenei teaches at Iran’s greatest seminary, in Qom, however alternative spiritual leaders have disputed his credentials. He has no longer accomplished a elevated rank throughout the Shiite clerical hierarchy, one thing lengthy discoverable as essential for taking at the function of ideal chief.
The place he turns out adept, alternatively, is in political maneuvering.
A veteran of the Iran-Iraq struggle, Mr. Khamenei was a chum of his fellow soldier Hossein Taeb, who next was chief of the Modern Guards’ paramilitary unit, the Basij, and next led its judgement forces for a few years. Mr. Khamenei is thought to have alternative high-level hyperlinks to Iran’s safety equipment as smartly, mentioned Mr. Azizi.
Mr. Khamenei used to be accused via Iranian reformists of taking part in a vital function within the 2005 election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a hard-line populist, who swiftly beat the eminent applicants on the moment.
In 2009, then Mr. Ahmadinejad’s re-election in opposition to the reformist chief Mir-Hossein Mousavi, antigovernment protests swept the rustic. Responding to Mr. Khamenei’s suspected function within the election, in addition to rumors of his succession, some opposition activists chanted, “Mojtaba, may you die and not become supreme leader.”
Nearest, in 2022, in any other flow of antgovernment protests, Mr. Mousavi, who has been beneath space arrest since 2011, known as on Ayatollah Khamenei to dispel the rumors about his son succeeding him. The ayatollah didn’t reply upcoming.
However previous this age, he did, as the problem of succession turns into way more urgent.
The cleric Mahmoud Mohammadi Araghi, a member of the Meeting of Professionals that selects the ideal chief, advised the state-affiliated information company ILNA that Ayatollah Khamenei used to be vehemently adversarial to his son being regarded as.
The Meeting of Professionals will have to unanimously choose the ideal chief. Till upcoming, they might make a selection a three- or five-member management council to run the rustic.
In the long run, the destiny of any possible successor lies inside of an dense device that critics say has simplest grow to be much less clear in recent times.
“The reality is that nobody knows,” mentioned Mr. Shabani. “And that is crazy. There is zero transparency on a process that affects millions of Iranians.”
