Two drone attacks target US base, hotel in Erbil, sources say

The decision marks one of the most consequential moments in the history of the Islamic Republic, effectively transferring power within the same family for the first time since the 1979 revolution.

But who exactly is Mojtaba Khamenei?

A powerful figure behind the scenes

Mojtaba Khamenei, 55, has long been considered one of the most influential figures inside Iran’s ruling system despite rarely appearing in public or holding formal political office.

For years he operated from within the Office of the Supreme Leader, serving as a gatekeeper and power broker around his father. His position has often been compared to the role played by Ahmad Khomeini, the son of Islamic Republic’s founder Ruhollah Khomeini, who served as a key aide and confidant during the early years of the revolutionary state.

Analysts say Mojtaba gradually built influence across the regime’s political, security and clerical institutions.

Dr. Eric Mandel, director of the Middle East Political and Information Network (MEPIN), told Iran International that Mojtaba has long been a central but opaque figure in Tehran’s power structure.

“Mojtaba Khamenei, the son of former Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, has long operated behind the scenes in Tehran, building deep ties with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and consolidating influence within the regime’s power structure. He is widely viewed as one of the architects of the regime’s repression," Mandel said.

Author and Iran analyst Arash Azizi told Iran International Mojtaba is viewed with deep suspicion. "This is why he has been a bete noire of democratic movements at least since 2009 when he was rumored to have helped orchestrate the repression. He is also known to be a favorite of some sections of the establishment such as those close to Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf who has ambitions of becoming Iran’s strongman."

Ties to Iran’s security establishment

A key source of Mojtaba’s influence lies in his close connections to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

During the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s, Mojtaba served in the Habib Battalion, a unit made up largely of volunteers connected to the Islamic Republic’s emerging revolutionary networks. The battalion operated under forces linked to the IRGC and took part in several major battles of the war.

Service in the Habib Battalion proved significant for Mojtaba. Many of the men who fought alongside him later rose to senior positions in Iran’s security and intelligence apparatus, including figures who would go on to lead parts of the IRGC’s intelligence organization and security commands responsible for protecting the regime.

Those wartime relationships are widely believed to have helped Mojtaba build lasting connections inside Iran’s powerful security establishment.

Over the years, opposition figures and political rivals have accused Mojtaba of playing a role in shaping election outcomes and coordinating crackdowns on dissent.

Questions over religious credentials

Iran’s constitution requires the Supreme Leader to possess deep knowledge of Islamic jurisprudence and be recognized as a senior religious authority.

Mojtaba, however, is not widely considered to be among the highest-ranking clerics in Iran. He studied in the seminaries of Qom under several prominent conservative scholars but does not hold the rank of ayatollah.

Despite that, Iran’s political system has historically shown flexibility when elite consensus forms around a candidate.

A controversial succession

Mojtaba’s elevation is likely to intensify criticism that the Islamic Republic founded as a revolutionary Islamic system is evolving toward dynastic rule.

For years speculation about his succession drew comparisons to hereditary monarchies.

For a man who has spent decades operating largely in the shadows of Iran’s power structure, Mojtaba Khamenei now finds himself at the center of one of the most consequential periods in the country’s modern history.

Mojtaba Khamenei, the son of Iran’s Supreme Leader, sought treatment for impotence during multiple visits to private hospitals in the United Kingdom, Daily Mail reported citing a US diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks.

"It required four visits, including a final stay lasting two months, and he eventually had a son who was named 'Ali' after the baby's grandfather," read the report.

The 2008 cable said Mojtaba Khamenei married in 2004 and made several extended trips to London for medical treatment, naming the Wellington and Cromwell hospitals.

"Mojtaba was expected by his family to produce children quickly, but needed a fourth visit to the UK for medical treatment," according to the intelligence document.

The cable also described Mojtaba Khamenei as influential inside the Supreme Leader’s office and closely connected to senior commanders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, while saying that he was not expected to achieve the senior clerical rank typically associated with the role.

President Donald Trump is open to supporting armed groups willing to take up arms against Iran’s regime but has not made a final decision on providing arms, training or intelligence aid, US officials told The Wall Street Journal.

Trump has spoken with Kurdish leaders and prefers “somebody from within” to lead the country. “Most of the people we had in mind are dead,” he told reporters at the White House on Tuesday.

Trump has also raised the “Venezuela model” as a possible blueprint, in which a successor from within the existing system maintains stability after the top leader is removed, the report said.

Joint US-Israel strikes under Operation Epic Fury have disrupted Iran’s nuclear missile program, destroying key command centers, missile launchers, and radar sites, the Israeli ambassador to the United States said on Tuesday.

The attacks prevented Tehran from pairing enriched uranium with missile delivery systems, a critical step toward producing nuclear weapons, Ambassador Yechiel (Michael) Leiter said in a video posted on X.

“Together with the United States and Epic Fury, we have eliminated most of the radar stations in western Iran, the missile launchers, both surface-to-surface and surface-to-air. Today in Tehran, we took out the fourth of the four command centers, three we took out yesterday, creating chaos within the ranks of the Ayatollah regime. This creates a chink in the chain of command where they’re not able to send messages down the system onto the field, and that’s part of the reason we’re seeing the chaos of the Iranians firing ballistic missiles into all its neighbors all at once," Leiter said.

“The most important site we took out today was a site where they intended to pair nuclear enriched uranium with a missile delivery system. See, that’s the issue. When you’re talking about nuclear missiles, you have to take a delivery system and the enriched uranium and pair them together. That’s key when it comes to timing, because if we would have delayed these operations, they would have reached a point very soon where this impenetrable site would not have been able to be destroyed, and that’s why we had to act," he added.

“Remember what special envoy Steve Witkoff said just last night in his first meeting with the Iranians. They admitted they have 642 kilograms of enriched uranium at 60%. To go from 60% to 90% would take one week, and that would give them 11 bombs. Then all they’d have to do is pair it with the missile delivery systems, and what they’re doing now would be something we couldn’t prevent," Leiter said.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed on Saturday morning in US and Israeli air strikes. On Tuesday, according to exclusive information obtained by Iran International, Iran’s Assembly of Experts, under pressure from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), chose his son, Mojtaba Khamenei, as the next Supreme Leader. The decision has not been made public and is expected to be announced after Ali Khamenei is buried.

This is not a routine succession. It is a wartime decision shaped by the security state, and it raises serious questions about constitutional procedure. The priority appears to be speed and control, as the Islamic Republic faces attacks from outside and a leadership vacuum at the top.

Why the IRGC pushed Mojtaba

The IRGC needed two things at the same time: control and legitimacy.

Control means keeping the chain of command intact, preventing splits at the top, keeping the security forces coordinated, and stopping a scramble for power. In this crisis, the IRGC’s first priority is internal stability.

Legitimacy matters too, but not in a broad national sense. It means legitimacy inside the regime’s core base: hard-line politicians, the security institutions, and the loyal networks that still see the Islamic Republic as “their” state. In that narrow world, Mojtaba has something others do not. He can claim direct continuity with Khamenei, and the core base can accept him without feeling the system has broken.

That combination is why the IRGC chose him.

Mojtaba also has long-standing ties to the IRGC, going back decades, and deep relationships across its command networks. For years, he has been a key channel between his father and the Guard’s leadership. That gives him a rare position. He is close to the security core, but also linked to the civilian and clerical leadership that depends on it.

He has also effectively run the Supreme Leader’s office, the Beit, for at least the past two decades, and is widely seen as Ali Khamenei’s closest confidant. The Beit is not just a state within the state. It is the core of the state itself. In practice, Iran’s elected government and president are often a façade, with little real power. Real authority has long sat in the Beit, which controls key security, political and financial levers. That is why this apparatus is now protecting itself, and why it does not want an outsider coming in and taking control.

The Islamic Republic at a fork in the road

The Islamic Republic now faces two broad directions.

One is to keep fighting, stay defiant, absorb more damage, and try to outlast the attacks. That would likely mean tighter internal control, the dispersal of forces and assets, and heavier reliance on asymmetric pressure, including missiles, drones, proxies, and covert operations, while signalling that the state will not negotiate under fire.

The other is to step back and accept major concessions to stop the war and reduce pressure. That would mean giving up key pillars of Iran’s regional and military posture in return for a halt to attacks and some easing of pressure.

Mojtaba is well placed to pursue either path.

If the system chooses a bitter deal, it needs someone who can own it and stop the hardcore from turning on the leadership. If it chooses to fight on, it needs someone who can keep the IRGC united and keep the security state functioning under sustained attack. That is the political function of this succession.

The main question now is whether Israel and the US will target him immediately or give him time to make that choice. If they strike him straight away, it will be hard to avoid one conclusion: the campaign is no longer about pressure or deterrence. It is about regime change. If they hold back, the focus shifts to Mojtaba’s next move, and whether he chooses escalation or a climbdown.

The problem of blood and revenge

Any agreement with Donald Trump was always difficult for Ali Khamenei. In Tehran’s narrative, Trump sought Iran’s “surrender” and had the blood of Qasem Soleimani on his hands. Khamenei repeatedly ruled out reconciliation and called for qisas, a concept in Islamic law meaning retribution, often understood as “life for life.”

For his successor, the burden is heavier. Trump now carries not only Soleimani’s blood, but also Ali Khamenei’s. That makes any compromise far harder to sell, and it also raises the domestic stakes for any decision to escalate.

Mojtaba has one advantage inside the system. He can present himself as the person entitled to decide what comes next. If the leadership chooses to fight on, he can frame it as continuity, duty, and retaliation. If it chooses to pause revenge and prioritise survival, he can frame it as a decision made by the heir and the family, not as a humiliation forced from the outside.

Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder and first Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic, set the guiding rule in a line that has the force of a fatwa in Shia political doctrine: “Preserving the system is the highest duty.” In plain terms, it means the survival of the Islamic Republic comes before almost everything else. As vali-e dam, the next of kin with the right to demand retribution, Mojtaba can argue that he also has the right to set it aside if the state’s survival requires it. That is how he can ask the regime’s core base to accept restraint, and present it not as retreat, but as obedience to a higher obligation.

What stepping back would mean in practice

If Mojtaba chooses regime survival over confrontation, the price will be high. A serious de-escalation would likely mean accepting Trump’s demands, including:

• Ending enrichment as a national project, not just pausing it
• Accepting long-term, enforceable limits on missile range
• Reducing or abandoning the proxy network, not just rebranding it
• Ending the policy of confrontation with Israel

For Mojtaba, accepting these would not just be a policy shift. It would mean dismantling his father’s 37-year legacy in a single afternoon.

Without real and verifiable change in these areas, the US and Israel would have little reason to stop.

Even then, a deal would not solve the regime’s deeper problem at home. Legitimacy inside Iranian society is badly damaged, especially after the January massacre, and the state is widely seen as corrupt, incompetent, and violent. A ceasefire might stop the bombs, but it would not stop the political decay.

Where this leaves the Islamic Republic

If Mojtaba keeps the hard line while the world’s most powerful military is striking alongside the region’s most capable one, the window for a new leader to consolidate may be measured in days, not months.

If he chooses a climbdown, the war may stop, but the inheritance remains bleak. He would be taking ownership of painful concessions that undo much of his father’s legacy, while inheriting a state that is badly broken. The Islamic Republic is facing something close to a failed-state reality: an economy in severe distress, hollowed-out institutions, and public hostility so high that normal governance becomes hard to sustain. A halt in attacks would not restore capacity, trust, or authority.

Either way, Mojtaba Khamenei begins in the ruins of his father’s world. The Islamic Republic’s options are all expensive, its survival is no longer guaranteed, and for the first time in forty years, time is the one thing Tehran cannot buy.