Mojtaba Khamenei, the second son of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed on the first day of the war that the United States and Israel launched on Iran, has been selected as Iran’s new supreme leader, state media reports.
The 56-year-old hardline cleric’s mother, wife, and one of his sisters were also killed in the strike that killed his father, but the younger Khamenei was reportedly not present and has so far survived the intense bombing of Iran.
Iran’s Assembly of Experts – the 88-member clerical body that selects the country’s supreme leader – has called upon Iranians to maintain unity and pledge support to Mojtaba Khamenei.
In a statement circulated on state media on Sunday, the assembly said that Khamenei was chosen based on a “decisive vote”. It urged all Iranians, “especially the elites and intellectuals of the seminaries and universities”, to “pledge allegiance to the leadership and maintain unity”.
Khamenei has never run for office or been subjected to a public vote, but has for decades been a highly influential figure in the inner circle of the previous supreme leader, cultivating deep ties to the paramilitary Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). (AlJazeera)
