Vali Nasr, an expert of Iran and Shia Islam at Johns Hopkins University, said Mojtaba Khamenei would be a surprising choice — and a potentially telling one.
“He was slated to become the successor for a long time,” Nasr said. “But for the past two years, it seemed to have dropped off from the radar. If he is elected, it suggests it is a much more hardline Revolutionary Guard side of the regime that is now in charge.”
Mojtaba Khamenei, 56, is an influential if reclusive figure who has operated in the shadows of the empire of his father, who was killed on Saturday in the US-Israeli strikes on Iran.
Mojtaba Khamenei is known for having close ties to the Revolutionary Guard. The Guard, according to the three officials, pushed for his appointment, arguing that he had the qualifications needed to steer Iran in this time of crisis.
“Mojtaba is the wisest pick right now because he is intimately familiar with running and co-ordinating security and military apparatuses,” said Mehdi Rahmati, an analyst in Tehran. “He was in charge of this already.”
Rahmati said that, nevertheless, not everyone will be pleased.
“A portion of the public will react negatively and forcefully to this decision, and it will have a backlash,” he predicted.
Supporters of the Government would see him as a continuation of a ruler whom they view as martyred and will back him swiftly, Rahmati said.
But government opponents, too, will see him as a continuation of the regime, which in recent months killed hundreds of protesters.
Other candidates who have emerged as finalists are Ali Reza Arafi, a cleric and jurist who is part of the three-person transition council of leadership named after Ali Khamenei was killed, and Hassan Khomeini, grandson of the Islamic revolution’s founding father, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
Both Arafi and Hassan Khomeini are viewed as moderates, with the latter being close to the sidelined reformist political faction in Iran.
Abdolreza Davari, a politician close to Mojtaba Khamenei, said in public statements and in interviews with the New York Times that if Khamenei did succeed his father, he could emerge as a figure in the style of Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
“He is extremely progressive and will move to sideline the hardliners,” Davari said in a text message before the war. “See his appointment as a shedding of skin.”
Earlier today at a news conference in Washington, US President Donald Trump said that many of the people his Government had viewed as potential leaders of Iran had been killed since Saturday. “Pretty soon we’re not going to know anybody,” he said.
Asked about a worst-case scenario in Iran, he said: “I guess the worst case would be we do this and somebody takes over who’s as bad as the previous person. Right, that could happen. We don’t want that to happen.”
The Assembly of Experts consists of 88 senior Shia clerics who are picked in public elections and under Iran’s Constitution are responsible for appointing, supervising and discharging the supreme leader. This is the second supreme leader the assembly will pick in the Islamic republic’s 47-year history.
In 1989, the assembly picked Ali Khamenei, handing him the reins of a newly created theocracy. For more than four decades he ruled with absolute power and little flexibility to change.
Mojtaba Khamenei’s wife, Zahra Adel; his mother, Mansoureh Khojasteh Bagherzadeh, and a son were killed alongside his father in strikes on Saturday, the Iranian Government said.
