Mojtaba Khamenei, son of Iran’s late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was named the country’s new supreme leader Sunday. The decision came just over a week after a U.S.-Israeli airstrike killed his father and left Khamenei with a foot fracture and other minor injuries.
The announcement appeared in a statement from the Assembly of Experts, the group of Shiite Muslim clerics responsible for appointing Iran’s supreme leader. Khamenei, 56, had appeared on some lists of potential successors, but the decision to elect him directly opposed his father’s staunch beliefs on dynastic succession.
“Islam proclaims monarchy and hereditary succession wrong and invalid,” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei wrote in his 1970 book “Islamic Government: Governance of the Jurist.” He claimed such structures violate Islamic law.
Ciruce Movahedi-Lankarani, the Farhang Foundation Chair in Iranian Studies at USC, said that Khamenei’s appointment could be seen as the “safest” choice for the Islamist regime.
“If the government wants to continue its current trajectory, or feels that its current policies are what will preserve its rule, then from that perspective, I could see that overriding the theoretical or philosophical opposition to hereditary rule,” he said.
Khamenei has never held public office, and he was described by Movahedi-Lankarani as a “gatekeeper to his father.” He reportedly oversaw military and intelligence operations within the previous government and is closely connected to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, one of the most powerful bodies of Iran’s armed forces. Following his appointment, the Guard Corps now answers to him.
Public attention toward Khamenei intensified as his wife, Zahra Haddad Adel, and his son were also killed in the airstrike that killed his father.
Before the announcement, President Donald Trump called Khamenei an “unacceptable” choice for supreme leader.
“We want someone that will bring harmony and peace to Iran,” Trump said in an interview with Axios.
Douglas Becker, a professor of international relations at USC, said there could be a link between President Trump’s comments and Iran’s decision to appoint Khamenei.
“If the Iranians are choosing to go with the son of the leader who has just been killed, that’s their way of saying business as usual,” Becker said. “There is no way that somebody whom Donald Trump would say is acceptable to him would have ever been named leader by this regime.”
Becker also raised the possibility of a widening divide between the United States and Israel over the conflict.
“For Israel, this isn’t about regime change. It’s about regime destruction,” he said. “Whereas for the U.S., it is more about regime change.”
Becker said the decision to publicly announce any new leader surprised him.
“I thought [Iran] might not even reveal the Supreme Leader because they know that immediately they’re going to be targeted by the Israelis,” Becker said. “But my guess is that [Iran] determined that they needed to assert somebody to be the Supreme Leader, to demonstrate to the state and to Iranians that the government is still in place.”
As for how the new leader will govern the country, Movahedi-Lankarani emphasized that the public knows little about the newly appointed supreme leader, making it difficult to predict Khamenei’s policies.
“Everyone is basically guessing because nobody really knows who he is or what he really thinks,” he said.
Hadi Ghaemi, executive director of the Center for Human Rights in Iran, said he fears for the people of Iran following Khamenei’s appointment.
“The regime does always have that tendency that wherever it’s pushed back or suffers a defeat to take it out on the Iranian people, especially people in prisons or people who have been explicitly expressing their dissent,” he said. “So I see a very dark time coming.”
Becker said many Iranians currently have limited ability to protest the new regime.
“The lack of protests is partially because there are bombs raining, but there’s also a sense that the state still exists, and if you protest,” he said, “there’s going to be repression.”
Despite the repression, Ghaemi says he has “no doubt” the people of Iran will continue seeking ways to overthrow the Islamic Republic.
“The question is, how many people within the regime are thinking of the future of their children and grandchildren in a peaceful, prosperous, or at least on the path to peace and prosperity country?” Ghaemi said. “Or do they want a Shiite fundamentalist regime that only cares about preserving its religious legacy?”