Iran has appointed Mojtaba Khamenei as its new supreme leader.
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The United States scored a quick victory in its first attack on Iran, killing Ayatollah Khamenei, the country’s supreme leader for almost 37 years.
But news that the country had named Khamenei’s son Mojtaba Khamenei as his successor, and Iran’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, sent oil prices soaring above $120 a barrel on Monday, the highest level since 2022.
Michael Herzog, a former Israeli ambassador to the United States, told CNBC on Tuesday that “Iranians are showing defiance by choosing Khamenei’s son.” He added that this shows “that there is continuity and that the man will probably take revenge.”
US President Donald Trump told Fox News he was “disappointed” with the selection of the new supreme leader and said: “I don’t think he will be able to live in peace.”
Asked about the division in the leadership, Esmail Baghaei, a spokesman for the country’s foreign ministry, told CNBC on Monday that the country is united around Mojtaba Khameini.
The 56-year-old took over the job of leading a country of more than 90 million people in a war that has engulfed the Middle East.
Here are five things you should know about him.
he is more hardline than his father
Mojtaba Khamenei has closer ties to the Islamic Republic’s political and security establishment than his father.
Born in the religious city of Mashhad, he was just 10 years old when his father, a leading figure in the revolution alongside the country’s first Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, overthrew the Shah and established the Islamic Republic in 1979.
The son joined Iran’s most elite military institution, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), in the late 1980s and served during the final years of the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq War, during which time his ties to Iran’s security elite were formed.
After the war, Mojtaba Khamenei studied with prominent clerics in Qom. Despite his many years in the system, he has no traditional religious status.
He strengthened his ties to Iran’s clergy and strengthened his position within hard-line conservative political networks through his marriage to Zahra Haddad Adel, the daughter of a senior conservative politician.
Mojtaba Khameini has operated quietly from his father’s office for decades, cultivating influence throughout the Revolutionary Guards. His decades of entrenchment within Iran’s institutions have shaped his reputation as, by many accounts, a stronger and more hardline figure than his father during his earlier reign.
Mojtaba Khamenei is said to be one of the leaders who oversaw the crackdown on the Green Movement in 2009, when security forces brutally suppressed demonstrators who opposed President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s declaration of election victory, the largest demonstration to that point since the 1979 revolution.
He has close ties to the Revolutionary Guards.
Mojtaba Khamenei has maintained close ties with the Revolutionary Guards for many years.
The Revolutionary Guards are considered fierce defenders of the Islamic Republic and were founded by Iran’s first supreme leader, Ruhollah Khomeini, shortly after the 1979 revolution. It was further entrenched in the national system by his successors. It boasts extensive intelligence capabilities, a business network, and approximately 200,000 people.
His involvement with the Revolutionary Guards during the Iran-Iraq war was central to his rise, allowing him to develop close relationships with Guard members and their internal networks. His wartime ties later developed into a core power base within the security establishment.
Mojtaba Khamenei acted as an important figure within his father’s office. He coordinated directly with Revolutionary Guard commanders and intelligence units and managed sensitive security and political files.
Without the support of the Revolutionary Guards, Mojtaba Khamenei would not have been able to succeed his father.
Many of my family members died in the airstrike.
Along with his father, Mojtaba Khamenei’s wife, son and mother were also killed in an airstrike on February 28, the Iranian government said.
“You can imagine this is not someone who is going to be in any kind of conciliatory mood,” Jasmine El Gamal, a former Middle East adviser to the U.S. Pentagon and current CEO of Abeloth Strategies, told CNBC.
El Gamal added: “The two countries are still very far apart. That’s why I say that in the coming days there will be further escalation from a military perspective.”
he has never held public office
On March 4, 2026, a billboard with a portrait of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is displayed in Tehran, Iran.
Majid Saidi | Getty Images
In 2005, he was accused by reformists of working with religious leaders and the Revolutionary Guards to secure the election of conservative candidate Ahmadinejad as president. He faced similar charges in 2009.
Mahdi Karroubi, a reformist candidate running for election at the time, wrote a letter to Ali Khameini, then the ayatollah, stating that his son was working to support one of the candidates. In the letter, Karroubi said Ali Khameini said of his son, “He is not just my son, he is his own man,” according to excerpts published by PBS.
In 2024, when Iran’s Council of Experts met to discuss Ali Khamenei’s successor, the then-Supreme Leader said his son should be excluded from consideration, the New York Times reported.
He reportedly has an international real estate empire
Despite his image of piety and frugality in Iran, Mojtaba Khamenei owns a real estate empire worth hundreds of millions of dollars from the Middle East to Europe, according to a yearlong investigation by Bloomberg published in January.
According to a report by Bloomberg, his investments amount to more than 100 million pounds (about $134 million), including a luxury home on London’s Bishop’s Avenue (commonly known as Billionaires Street).
Other holdings include villas in the famous Emirates Hills, also known as the ‘Beverly Hills of Dubai’, and luxury hotels in Europe from Frankfurt to Mallorca.
Many of his assets are not held in his own name but through a network of intermediaries, offshore companies and business associates, Bloomberg reported.
