Iran picks Mojtaba Khamenei as new leader
INTERNATIONAL – ASIA
10 MARCH 2026
- Iran’s Assembly of Experts, an 88-member clerical body, announced that it had chosen Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, son of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the former Supreme Leader who was assassinated by a joint American-Israeli strike on February 28, as the country’s new leader.
- The 57-year-old cleric will be the third Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic, after Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, founder of the republic, and Ali Khamenei, who held the position for 37 years.
- Though Iran has an elected President, the Supreme Leader is the head of the state and the commander-in-chief of the country’s armed forces, making him the most powerful authority in the system.
- On February 28, 2026, after U.S.-Israeli strikes killed Ali Khamenei and several other top Iranian officials, President Donald Trump had asked Iranians to overthrow the government.
- On March 5, 2026, Mr. Trump said he wanted to have a role in the selection of Iran’s new Supreme Leader. He called Mojtaba Khamenei a “lightweight”, and said the new leader should be acceptable to him.
- Mojtaba Khamenei, 57, has built close ties with both the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the clerical establishment.
- The younger Khamenei has maintained strong ties with figures associated with the Axis of Resistance, stated the biography, referring to Iran’s non-state allies in the region.
- “He shared a particularly close relationship with Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah,” the Secretary General of Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shia militia, who was assassinated by an Israeli strike in September 2024.
- Hezbollah, which is fighting Israeli forces in southern Lebanon, issued a statement pledging loyalty to the new Supreme Leader.
- Russia and China, Iran’s close partners, welcomed the new Supreme Leader
