After Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s death, who will lead Iran?

Mojtaba Khamenei, son of Iran’s late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has long been considered a contender to the post of the country’s next paramount ruler — even before an Israeli strike killed his father last week and despite the fact he has never been elected or appointed to a government position.

A secretive figure within the Islamic Republic, Mojtaba Khamenei has not been seen publicly since Saturday, when the Israeli airstrike targeting the supreme leader’s offices killed his 86-year-old father.

Also killed were the younger Khamenei’s wife, Zahra Haddad Adel, who came from a family long associated with the country’s theocracy.

Khamenei is believed to still be alive and has likely has gone into hiding as American and Israeli airstrikes continue to pound Iran, though state-run Iranian media have not reported on his whereabouts.

An heir to the theocracy?

Mojtaba Khamenei’s name continues to circulate as a possible candidate to replace his father, something that had been criticized in the past as potentially creating a theocratic version of Iran’s former hereditary monarchy.

But now with his father and wife considered by hard-liners as martyrs in the war against America and Israel, Khamenei’s stock likely has risen with the aging clerics of the 88-seat Assembly of Experts who will select the country’s next supreme leader.

Whoever becomes the leader will gain control of an Iranian military now at war and a stockpile of highly enriched uranium that could be used to build a nuclear weapon — should he choose to decree it.

Khamenei has worked closely with Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, both with commanders of its expeditionary Quds Force and its all-volunteer Basij that violently suppressed nationwide protests in January, the US Treasury has said.

The United States sanctioned him in 2019 during the first term of U.S President Donald Trump over working to “advance his father’s destabilizing regional ambitions and oppressive domestic objectives.”

Total military control

There has been only one other transfer of power in the office of supreme leader of Iran, the paramount decision-maker since the country’s 1979 Islamic Revolution. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini died at age 86 after being the figurehead of the revolution and leading Iran through its eight-year war with Iraq.

The supreme leader is at the heart of Iran’s complex power-sharing Shiite theocracy and has final say over all matters of state.

He also serves as the commander-in-chief of the country’s military and the Guard, a paramilitary force that the United States designated a terrorist organization in 2019, and which his father empowered during his rule.

The Guard, which has led the self-described “Axis of Resistance,” a series of militant groups and allies across the Middle East meant to counter the US and Israel, also has extensive wealth and holdings in Iran. It also controls the country’s ballistic missile arsenal.