Thirty years he had been the most powerful man in Iran ever to be seen.
No speeches. No sermons. No interviews. And, even as his father was roaring away in pulpits and making a name in the history of a nation, Mojtaba Khamenei was toiling in the shadows, pushing through corridors, whispering into the correct ears, pulling the right threads that wigged the whole clockwork of the Islamic Republic without ever leaving the slightest trace of them upon it.
On Sunday the shadow got into the light.
As a successor to his father Ayatollah Ali Khamenei who was killed in a joint US-Israel attack just nine days ago, Mojtaba Khamenei is currently the new Supreme Leader of one of the most heavily armed theocracies in the world. He is 56 years old. He has been sanctioned by the US since 2019. And Washington and Tel Aviv had succeeded in a few hours after his appointment to issue a public death warrant against him.
The Man Nobody Heard Coming
Mojtaba was born in 1969 in Mashhad as the second child of the Ayatollah. He had enlisted in the Revolutionary Guard in his teens in the Iran-Iraq War, pursued theology with his father in Qom and then did something uncharacteristic of a cleric with ambitions he went off to the gears of power instead of attempting to drive them in the limelight.
He had been the gatekeeper of his father over the course of decades. He controlled access to meetings and non-access. He established relationships among the most conservative branches of the IRGC. The kind of profile that was necessary in his case was the one that worked in subterranean deliberations between generals and clerics; this was already a mighty one.
His name was familiar to Iranian people. To the majority, he had never been heard.
What they were aware of and democracy activists have been screaming years ago, was that Mojtaba was the man behind the crackdown on the 2009 Green Movement, the bloody crackdown of hundreds of thousands of Iranians who flooded the streets following a contested election. Such demonstrations were systematically suppressed and brutally. Investigators say that his fingerprints were everywhere on it.
A Vote Held Under the Gun
The process of selection said it all about what Iran is going through. As the nation was at war, its skies still reeking of Israeli attacks, members of the Assembly of Experts, senior ones, were under heavy pressure by the IRGC commanders just before the vote was taken. The individuals who objected were allowed little time to speak. Discussion was cut short. The vote was called quickly.
The outcome was packaged instantly in the tone of rebellion. One of the members of the Assembly said that the new leader was selected specifically because he was a man that the enemy hated – a literal, intentional attack on Donald Trump, who had already referred to the appointment as unacceptable before it was even official.
Iran had chosen the man that America did not want. And they would have that people know it was done on purpose.
A Warning to the World, Which Trump Delivers Not Diplomatically Dressed
Washington was not subtle in his position. A few days prior to the vote, Trump was confrontational as usual when he spoke to the ABC News that Mojtaba would not be able to remain in power without American approval, and that without it he would not last long. In another interview, he rejected the younger Khamenei saying that he even had a father who was reportedly incompetent.
Israel was equally direct. The Israeli Defence Minister was quoted saying that the appointment also placed Mojtaba an instantaneous target to be killed.
The response of Iran was not verbal but in the shape of missiles. Soon after the announcement, the Iranian state television showed footage of another strike, that is, the projectiles, which, reports said had the inscription: At Your Command, Sayyid Mojtaba.
The new supreme leader was an heir of a war. The initial move that he made was to continue fighting it.
Why This Changes Means Everything
The decision of Mojtaba Khamenei informs you about something significant where the actual power of Iran currently lies. This is not a pragmatist. This is not a diplomat. It is a man who has spent his whole career within the bosom of the IRGC, a man whose instincts were developed not in the bargaining table but in the culture of violence and the inculcate of military obedience.
The appointment, analysts pay close attention to, indicates that the hardline security establishment of Iran has solidly established itself in power, and that the off-ramp of the ceasefire or diplomacy has indeed become even even more distant.
And to that, a Bloomberg investigation published earlier this year which has implicated Khamenei in an offshore financial system that goes across London, Dubai real estate, shipping, banking and the image that comes out is of a man who knows power in all its variants.
Iran has a new supreme leader. He is younger, tougher and more imbedded in the war machine than his father was. Trump has threatened to cause consequences. Israel has promised strikes. And the man to whom most Iranians had never heard a word spoken has already responded to them both, one missile at a time.
