Former Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s son, Mojtaba Khamenei, was selected to be the next Supreme Leader of Iran, according to multiple reports.
Iran’s Assembly of Experts was reported to have voted “overwhelmingly” to nominate Ayatollah Seyed Mojtaba Khamenei to be the country’s Supreme Leader, according to Iranian state media Tasnim News Agency.
Mojtaba becoming the Supreme Leader of Iran will make him the third Supreme Leader of Iran, and comes a week after his father was killed in an Israeli strike on his compound in Tehran.
In a post on X, Iran’s Fars News Agency also revealed that Ayatollah Seyed Mojtaba Khamenei will rise to power as the country’s next Supreme Leader.
The news of Mojtaba becoming the next Supreme Leader of Iran comes after President Donald Trump told ABC News that the next Supreme Leader of Iran would “have to get approval” from the United States, adding that without approval “he’s not going to last long.”
“He’s going to have to get approval from us,” Trump explained. “If he doesn’t get approval from us he’s not going to last long. We want to make sure that we don’t have to go back every 10 years, when you don’t have a president like me that’s not going to do it.”
Fox News Chief Foreign Correspondent Trey Yingst described Mojtaba as being “the gatekeeper for his father,” and added that he has “strong ties to” Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
The IRGC issued a statement that they were “ready to fully obey and devote the divine orders of the Supreme Leader of the time, Ayatollah Seyyed Mojtaba Khamenei, and to preserve the values of the Islamic Revolution,” according to Iran’s Tasnim News Agency.
“The IRGC, as soldier, and the powerful arm of the Guardianship, while supporting the election of the Assembly of Experts, is ready to fully obey and devote the divine orders of the Supreme Leader of the time, Ayatollah Seyyed Mojtaba Khamenei, and to preserve the values of the Islamic Revolution and protect the precious heritage of the Imams of the Revolution, Imam Khomeini (may Allah have mercy on him) and Imam Khamenei (may Allah have mercy on him),” the IRGC said.
The selection of Mojtaba as Iran’s next Supreme Leader comes after Trump announced last weekend that the United States and Israel launched joint strikes on Iran, with the purpose to destroying “Iran’s stockpiles of missiles.”
