Iran’s Assembly of Experts announced on Sunday, March 8, that Mojtaba Khamenei would serve as the country’s next Supreme Leader , stepping into the role following the de@th of his father.
Ali Khamenei had led the Islamic Republic for 37 years before being killed on February 28 in a U.S.-Israeli strike on Tehran, marking the opening day of the war.
The Assembly of Experts — an 88-member clerical panel supervised by the 12-member Guardian Council — carried out the selection process.
In its announcement, the body issued a statement urging the Iranian public to maintain unity and pledge allegiance to the incoming leader.
At 57, Mojtaba has never held elected office, but spent years operating quietly within his father’s inner circle, cultivating deep ties across the security establishment particularly with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
His ascension is widely seen as a signal that hardline factions within Iran’s ruling establishment remain firmly in control, and that the government may have little appetite for negotiations in the near term.
Prior to the appointment being formalized, President Trump had declared Mojtaba an “unacceptable” choice and suggested he wanted to be involved in determining who would lead Iran — a demand Iranian officials flatly rejected. More specifically, Trump had called Mojtaba a “lightweight” and warned that any leader appointed without U.S. approval would “not last long.”
