Mojtaba Khamenei

• 1. Introduction

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  Mojtaba Khamenei is the third supreme leader of Iran, and many of the people he rules have never heard his voice. By March 2026 he had delivered no public lectures, no Friday sermons and no political addresses. For years Iranians knew he was a rising power in the theocratic establishment, yet he stayed out of view. Since his appointment, the government has released no confirmed footage of him at all. He now holds an office once held by his own father. This documentary asks how a man who built influence away from the cameras reached the highest post in Iran. It asks why his rise stirred anger inside the country and anxiety abroad. And it asks what is genuinely known about his condition, when officials, newspapers and rivals offer accounts that cannot all be true.

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• 2. Family and Formation

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  On the 8th of September 1969 in Mashhad, Mojtaba Hosseini Khamenei was born, the second child of Ali Khamenei and Mansoureh Khojasteh Bagherzadeh. His name honoured Navvab Safavi, born Mojtaba Mir-Lohi, a radical Shia cleric. Ali Khamenei once said that Safavi "first kindled the fire of revolutionary Islam in my heart." Mojtaba grew up with five siblings: an elder brother, Mostafa, two younger brothers, Masoud and Meysam, and two younger sisters, Boshra and Hoda. His paternal grandfather, Javad Khamenei, was a Twelver Shia cleric and scholar.

  The family name points to Khamaneh, a small town in East Azerbaijan. His ancestry is mainly Persian, with a smaller Azeri share and distant roots in Tafresh. The family also traces its line to Husayn ibn Ali, a maternal grandson of the Prophet Muhammad. That descent explains the middle name Hosseini, which means descendant of Husayn.

  The household was conservative and religious, and the boy met Islamic learning and revolutionary ideas early. He finished at Alavi high school in Tehran, then turned to theology, studying first under his own father and Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi.

  Around 1987, at age 17 and just out of school, he joined the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. He served in the Habib bin Muzahir Battalion beside Qassem Soleimani, Hossein Hamedani and Hossein Ta'eb, men who would later command the Guards. He took part in several operations of the Iran-Iraq War, including Beit ol-Moqaddas 2, Dawn 10 and Mersad.

  In 1989 he began studying in Qom to become a cleric. His teachers there included Mohammad-Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi, Ayatollah Lotfollah Safi Golpaygani and Mohammad Bagher Kharazi. He also completed specialized studies in psychology and psychoanalysis. Later he taught at the Qom Seminary, and from 2004 he gave Kharij-e Fiqh courses, advanced jurisprudence, for approximately two decades. His class was considered one of the most heavily attended advanced classes in the seminary.

  The Dars-e Kharij is the highest level of jurisprudential instruction. It is a prerequisite for becoming a mujtahid, a scholar qualified to reason independently about Islamic law. Whether his training amounted to that rank would later become a pointed question.

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• 3. Basij and Ballot Box

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  In 2009 it was reported that Khamenei had taken over the Basij, one of five branches of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. He had already held the title of Vakil of the Supreme Leader under his father since 2008. That same year, Iran held a presidential election, and reformist critics blamed him for suppressing the protests that followed. Local and foreign-based democracy activists linked him to the violent suppression of demonstrators in the Green Movement. In the same year, The Guardian argued that "the strength of Mojtaba's following has not been demonstrated" and that he "by no means has the theological status" to become Supreme Leader.

  Khamenei was affiliated with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and supported him in the elections of 2005 and 2009. Journalists said he may have played a leading role in orchestrating the 2009 victory. He was also speculated to have been instrumental in the crackdown on protesters in June of that year.

  On the 9th of July, protesters in Tehran chanted a slogan wishing death on Mojtaba so that he would never see the leadership. They accused his father of working to smooth the way for his succession. Mehdi Karroubi, a reformist candidate in the 2009 election, wrote an open letter accusing Khamenei of conspiring to rig the vote in Ahmadinejad's favor. In 2012, Ahmadinejad turned on him, accusing Khamenei of embezzling from the state treasury.

  In February 2021, Independent Persian claimed that Ahmadinejad had met Khamenei, who reportedly backed his views and his candidacy in the 2021 presidential election. Mehdi Fazaili denied that any meeting took place.

  In 2023, Iran International published leaked reports from the Guards. They indicated that Khamenei effectively controlled the Basij and held significant influence over who was assigned or dismissed in the Intelligence Protection Organization.

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• 4. The Succession Problem

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  In 2014, and again in 2025, reports said that the choice of Ali Khamenei's successor had already been made but not disclosed. Several analysts named Mojtaba as a possible heir, and multiple Western sources called him the heir apparent. Ali Khamenei never discussed a replacement in public. Some reports said he opposed his son taking over, and US intelligence indicated that Ali considered Mojtaba unintelligent and unqualified.

  The rules stood in the way. The Supreme Leader must be elected by the Assembly of Experts. The Iranian constitution also requires adherence to Ruhollah Khomeini's interpretation of velayat-e faqih, the Guardianship of the Islamic Jurist. Under that reading, the Supreme Leader must be a mujtahid, able to interpret Sharia law. Mojtaba is a hojjatoleslam, a rank below that of ayatollah.

  The Guardian noted a precedent that cut the other way. Khomeini, the inaugural Supreme Leader, had exerted a strong influence in favour of the choice of Mojtaba's father.

  During the presidency of Ebrahim Raisi, Khamenei was one of several clerics speculated as a possible successor, though he was considered unlikely to win the post. The Middle East Institute argued that a Supreme Leader appointing his own son would cause conflict among Iran's political and religious leaders. It would signal that the revolutionary system had evolved into dynastic rule. Shia theological principles prohibit such a succession, and the Khameneis themselves had voiced opposition to it.

  The test came in March 2026, in circumstances unlike those of any earlier succession.

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• 5. Election Under Fire

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  On the 8th of March, the Assembly of Experts announced that Mojtaba Khamenei had been elected Supreme Leader in a "unanimous vote." His father had been assassinated in the 2026 Iran war, and the circumstances of the vote were far from ordinary. Eight members of the council said they would boycott an online meeting planned for the 5th of March. The assembly building had been destroyed before the vote. Ali Khamenei's own election had followed a period of relative tranquility that allowed several meetings. Mojtaba's came with no such calm.

  The Daily Telegraph reported that Mojtaba had built a "loyalty structure that spanned the country." At its apex stood the Guards, which, the paper said, would "legitimise his leadership when the moment came." According to Iran International, the Guards pressured the Assembly of Experts to elect him.

  US president Donald Trump said on the 5th of March that Khamenei's election would be "unacceptable" and that he had to be involved in choosing Iran's next leader. After the vote, Trump said he was "disappointed" and that Khamenei "cannot live in peace." Israel said it considered Khamenei, like his father, a target for assassination.

  An Iran International analysis said the election completed the Islamic Republic's shift away from public backing. Analysts and scholars described it as a return to hereditary rule, which Iran had abandoned after the 1979 revolution. Many Iranian social media users mocked the appointment. Protesters chanted "Death to Mojtaba" from their homes.

  On the 17th of March, a senior Iranian official said Khamenei had rejected de-escalation proposals passed along by intermediaries. According to the official, he demanded that the US and Israel be "brought to their knees."

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• 6. Wounded or Hidden

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  On the 28th of February, an airstrike hit the residence of the Supreme Leader. It killed Ali Khamenei, Mojtaba's wife and other family members, and injured Mojtaba himself. One of his sisters also died at the onset of the war. He had married Zahra Haddad-Adel, daughter of the ultraconservative politician and writer Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel, in 1999. Their first child was born in 2007. Their children are Mohamed Amin, Fatemeh Sadat and Mohammad Bagher.

  What happened to Mojtaba that day is disputed. Iranian officials said he had sustained minor injuries to the face and foot. Yousouf, the son of President Masoud Pezeshkian, told ISNA that he was "safe and sound." The Daily Telegraph obtained a recording of Mazaher Hosseini, Ali Khamenei's chief of protocol. Hosseini said Mojtaba survived because he had gone outside for a walk minutes before Israel struck the compound, and that he suffered a minor leg injury.

  Other outlets painted a darker picture. Voice of Emirates reported life-threatening lacerations and fractures to his abdomen and legs, a semi-comatose state, and a ventilator in the intensive care unit of Sina Hospital. On the 15th of March, Al-Jarida reported that he had been moved to Moscow for treatment in an operation ordered by Russian president Vladimir Putin. The Times reported that he was unconscious and being treated for a "severe" medical condition in Qom. On the 6th of April, it cited diplomatic correspondence based on US and Israeli intelligence. The Washington Post said he was believed to be "badly wounded."

  Iranian deputy foreign minister Saeed Khatibzadeh insisted that Khamenei "is well and in full health, is present in his office, and is in fact in control of everything." An Iranian official told The Telegraph: "No one knows anything about Mojtaba, whether he is alive or dead or how badly injured." The official added that all commanders had no news of him.

  A former Iranian diplomat asked why he had been chosen at all. Several senior clerics called for the return of the Interim Leadership Council.

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• 7. Words Without a Voice

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  On the 12th of March, four days after his appointment, state television read a written message attributed to Khamenei. It carried no video or audio, and it promised revenge for the "martyrs." The Media Line said the text contained errors in typography and clerical language. It quoted "a knowledgeable source in Tehran" who said the Guards had dictated it and released it under his name. Al-Jarida suggested that Ali Larijani, Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, was the likely author, because it resembled messages Larijani had released days earlier.

  A second message, read on the 16th of March, asked government officials appointed by his father to stay in their posts. A third, on the 18th of March, vowed to avenge Larijani's assassination. A fourth, on the 20th of March, denied that Iran was involved in recent attacks on Turkey and Oman. After the ceasefire in the 2026 Iran war, another written statement said to stop firing for the time being, and a further message promised revenge.

  Images raised their own doubts. Shayan Sardarizadeh, a senior journalist with BBC Verify, said that supposed recent photographs of Khamenei distributed by the Iranian government were manipulated with artificial intelligence. On the 6th of April, Iranian state-run media released a video of him that was itself AI-generated.

  The most recent message in the record is dated the 18th of April. It said the Iranian navy was ready to inflict "new bitter defeats" on its enemies.

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• 8. Beliefs and Fortune

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  Analysts place Khamenei among the ultraconservatives of the Iranian principlists. He is a devotee of Taqi Yazdi, and a patron of Yazdi's party, the Front for Islamic Revolution Stability. The Atlantic Council says he is closely associated with fundamentalist and Mahdist views and has ties to some of the "most ideologically extremist clerics." Writing in The Atlantic, Karim Sadjadpour described him as more radical than his father. Ali Khamenei read Western literature, while Mojtaba has mostly limited himself to Islamic texts and the poetry of Hafez. Khamenei is fluent in Arabic and English as well as his native Persian.

  Portraits of his character diverge sharply. Jaber Rajabi, a former classmate who advised President Ahmadinejad on foreign policy, told The Independent that Khamenei is more ruthless than his father and "a better liar." Rajabi added that Khamenei "is not afraid to kill thousands of people." A partisan documentary instead calls him an "ethics-oriented jurist" and a "professor of human sciences," familiar with fields from military science to state administration. One source who knew him as a student said he focused on the end of the world and believed Iran had a mission from God to bring it about. The Guardian's Patrick Wintour wrote that he was viewed as someone who would put the Guards fully at the helm of Iranian politics.

  His wealth is a matter of reporting and allegation. He is widely believed to control significant assets in banks such as Bank Ayandeh. In January 2026, a year-long Bloomberg investigation linked him to an offshore financial network. The reported holdings include high-value real estate in London and Dubai, plus interests tied to shipping, banking relationships and hospitality assets in Europe. According to the investigation, intermediaries and layered corporate entities held the assets, which were generally not in his name.

  Bloomberg named Ali Ansari, an Iranian businessman sanctioned by the United Kingdom, as a central alleged facilitator. Property records and filings reportedly connect his companies to London residences on The Bishops Avenue and to hotel entities in Germany. Ansari denies any financial or personal relationship with Khamenei and intends to challenge the UK sanctions. On the 14th of January 2026, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said "millions and tens of millions" of dollars had been wired by Iran's leaders to institutions worldwide. Israel's Channel 14 reported that $1.5 billion in cryptocurrency had gone to an account in Dubai, with Khamenei alone sending approximately $328 million.

  Washington had named him years earlier. In 2019, the United States sanctioned him for acting in place of the Supreme Leader without holding any official position. It also cited his work with the commander of the Quds Force and his close ties to the Basij.

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