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Who is Mojtaba Ali Khamenei: Slain Ayatollah’s ‘radical’ son who has just lost most of his family chosen as the next Supreme Leader by Iran’s Assembly of Experts

· OpIndia

On 8th March, Iran’s Assembly of Experts declared Sayyed Mojtaba Hosseini Khamenei to be the third Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic in the midst of an intensifying crisis in the Middle East. He replaced his 86-year-old father, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was neutralised on 28th February in a military strike by the United States and Israel.

Zahra Haddad Adel, Mojtaba’s wife and the daughter of a previous speaker of parliament, also perished in the attack along with their son. The fresh announcement came following indications of a divide among Iranian officials as the country awaited the verdict of the 88-seat Assembly of Experts, a body of clerics responsible for picking the Supreme Leader.

The 56-year-old has mostly kept a low profile in contrast to the late Khamenei, as only a few images and videos of him have ever been released. He has never held a public office, delivered speeches or offered interviews. However, there have been long-standing suspicions that he had significant authority over Iran. He was regarded as “a combination of aide-de-camp, confidant, gatekeeper and power broker.”

Meet Mojtaba Ali Khamenei

Mojtaba is the second-oldest son of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and was born on 8th September 1969 in Mashhad, which is a holy Shia city and grew up while the latter attempted to topple the Pahlavi regime. He attended the esteemed Alavi High School in Tehran when the family relocated there post the 1979 revolution.

He served in the Habib ibn Mazahir Battalion of the 27th Mohammad Rasulullah Division during the last years of the Iran-Iraq War after enlisting in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) at the age of 17. He has a stronger connection to the organisation than his father, who has denied rumours of a split and swore allegiance to him. He developed enduring relationships with his comrades who went on to occupy high-profile jobs within the Iranian military institution.

Mojtaba taught and acquired his religious education from conservatives in the seminaries of Qom, the nation’s centre of Shia theological education, which is located south of Tehran. He was largely regarded as a Hojjatoleslam, a mid-level religious rank, instead of a senior Ayatollah deemed eligible for the top assignment.

Interestingly, he travelled to the United Kingdom’s private institutions four times between 2004 and 2008 for infertility treatment. He received medical care at the Wellington and Cromwell Hospitals in London.

“His marriage, to the daughter of former Majles Speaker Hadad Adel, followed two ‘temporary marriages’ and occurred relatively late in life, reportedly due to an impotency problem treated and eventually resolved during three extended visits to the UK,” read the diplomatic cables of the United States, which were made public by WikiLeaks in the late 2000s.

The meteoric rise to power

The younger Khamenei was referred to as “the power behind the robes” in the cables, based on Associated Press (AP). He had tapped his father’s phone and was referred to as his “principal gatekeeper.” However, he had been creating his own power base in the nation.

A 2008 cable conveyed that Mojtaba “is widely viewed within the regime as a capable and forceful leader and manager who may someday succeed to at least a share of national leadership; his father may also see him in that light.” It added, “Mojtaba is, however, due to his skills, wealth, and unmatched alliances, reportedly seen by a number of regime insiders as a plausible candidate for shared leadership of Iran upon his father’s demise, whether that demise is soon or years in the future.”

He ran the Supreme Leader’s office like a “fortress” long before he was appointed and was viewed as the real force. He worked behind the scenes but proved to be a crucial link between IRGC appointments and intelligence operations. His name emerged to be affiliated with a web of covert power and critical security apparatus, while his brothers mainly stayed within the comparatively safe limits of cultural or administrative roles attached to their father’s leadership.

Notably, hardliner Mohsen Araki, Alireza Arafi, who is one of the three members of the temporary council in charge of the nation and Hassan Khomeini, the grandson of the founder of the Islamic Republic in 1979, were competitors for the spot. However, Mojtaba’s selection illustrated how he consolidated support.

Moreover, he is considered more in favour of building nuclear weapons than his father and could adopt a more aggressive stance on Iran’s nuclear program. Additionally, he has resisted reformers who want to work with the West to end the nuclear campaign.

The grave accusations and US sanctions

The reformist faction accused Mojtaba of manipulating elections and using the Basij force to suppress peaceful demonstrators amid the Green Movement of 2009. A violent crackdown on these leaders and their supporters had ensued after the controversial re-election of ultra-conservative president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2009, which set off a massive movement. Mojtaba also played a key part in his first election in 2005.

Importantly, all-volunteer Basij forces have been at the centre of the onslaught against multiple waves of agitations in the country, including the latest uprising, which claimed the lives of thousands of people at the hands of the troops.

Mahdi Karroubi, who ran for president in both 2005 and 2009, called Mojtaba “a master’s son” and highlighted that he had tampered with both votes. However, the senior Khamenei apparently termed him “a master himself, not a master’s son.” It was mentioned that money was distributed to religious outfits via the IRGC and the Basij militia to influence the polls.

The United States Treasury Department placed sanctions on Mojtaba in 2019 and noted that he represented the Supreme Leader in “an official capacity, despite never being elected or appointed to a government position” aside from functioning in the latter’s office. It insisted that he was handed over responsibilities “to advance his father’s destabilising regional ambitions and oppressive domestic objectives” and joined hands with the commander of the IRGC’s Quds Force and Basij, a religious unit connected to the guards.

The Supreme Leader’s billion-dollar empire

Mojtaba owns a $3 billion global property and asset empire. According to sources, he has been intimately involved in the transactions, some of which date back at least to 2011, without putting the holdings in his own name, reported Bloomberg. They claimed that his financial dominance has included everything from Persian Gulf ships to Swiss bank accounts and British luxury property worth more than £100 million ($138 million).

The network of companies aided him in transferring money, estimated to be in the billions of dollars, into Western markets, despite sanctions slapped by Washington against him in 2019. This consists of luxury European hotels from Frankfurt to Mallorca, a mansion in an area known as the “Beverly Hills of Dubai” and premium real estate in several of London’s most elite neighbourhoods, including a £33.7 million house which was purchased in 2014.

Money for the deals had been routed through accounts at banks in the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Liechtenstein and the United Arab Emirates. Insiders disclosed that the sale of his country’s oil had been the main source of the funds. Many of the acquisitions are made in the name of Ali Ansari, an Iranian businessman who had been sanctioned by the British.

Mojtaba and his family also controlled billions of dollars and business properties dispersed throughout Iran’s several bonyads or foundations, which were financed by the state firms and other wealth earlier managed by the shah.

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