{"id":203479,"date":"2026-03-09T13:43:33","date_gmt":"2026-03-09T13:43:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/mojtaba-khamenei-son-of-ayatollah-killed-in-u-s-israeli-strikes-named-irans-new-supreme-leader-state-media-reports-nbc-news\/"},"modified":"2026-03-09T13:43:33","modified_gmt":"2026-03-09T13:43:33","slug":"mojtaba-khamenei-son-of-ayatollah-killed-in-u-s-israeli-strikes-named-irans-new-supreme-leader-state-media-reports-nbc-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/mojtaba-khamenei-son-of-ayatollah-killed-in-u-s-israeli-strikes-named-irans-new-supreme-leader-state-media-reports-nbc-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Mojtaba Khamenei, son of ayatollah killed in U.S.-Israeli strikes, named Iran's new supreme leader, state media reports – NBC News"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Mojtaba Khamenei<\/a> has been named Iran\u2019s new supreme leader, succeeding his father just more than a week after he was killed in U.S.-Israeli strikes.
A statement from the Assembly of Experts \u2014 the panel of Shia clerics responsible under Iranian law for choosing the country\u2019s top leader \u2014 said Mojtaba Khamenei had been selected as the third leader of the Islamic Republic, according to reports from IRIB state TV and the Fars, Tasnim and ISNA news agencies.
Mojtaba Khamenei, 56, the second son of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, <\/a>is widely viewed as a hard-line figure with close ties to the powerful Revolutionary Guard. Israel has already described him as a potential target, while President Donald Trump had called him \u201cunacceptable.\u201d
The younger Khamenei had been considered a potential leader prior to the American-Israeli attack that killed his father, though the idea was not universally popular given the 1979 toppling of the U.S.-backed hereditary monarchy of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.<\/a>
Follow along for live updates.<\/strong><\/em><\/a>
The semiofficial Mehr News Agency confirmed last week that Khamenei\u2019s son was alive and well after the deadly strikes launched by the U.S. and Israel that killed his father, his wife and other family members.
Mojtaba Khamenei has not been heard from since the start of the conflict.
A politician and cleric, he is known to hold significant influence among regime administrators and the Revolutionary Guard, <\/a>the paramilitary force leading Iran’s retaliatory campaign.
But he lacks the religious credentials of his father to lead a clerical regime, which claims to represent God\u2019s will on Earth.
His father became supreme leader in 1989 and soon, Mojtaba Khamenei and his family had access to the billions of dollars and business assets spread across the globe.
His own power rose in the years to come, with U.S. diplomatic cables published by WikiLeaks in the late 2000s referring to the younger Khamenei as \u201cthe power behind the robes.\u201d The United States sanctioned him in 2019 during Trump\u2019s first term over working to \u201cadvance his father\u2019s destabilizing regional ambitions and oppressive domestic objectives.\u201d
Trump told Axios last week that the choice would be \u201cunacceptable\u201d and suggested he wanted to handpick a new supreme leader, a process usually overseen by Iran\u2019s clerics.
\u201cThey are wasting their time. Khamenei\u2019s son is a lightweight. I have to be involved in the appointment,\u201d he said. \u201cKhamenei\u2019s son is unacceptable to me.\u201d
Trump repeated the sentiment in an ABC News interview, saying the new leader \u201cis not going to last long\u201d if Iranian leaders do not get his approval.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment Sunday about the selection of Mojtaba Khamenei as the new supreme leader.
The Israel Defense Forces warned Sunday that any successor to the late Khamenei would be considered a target.
Questions around who will succeed the supreme leader have been complicated by the death of Iran\u2019s then-president, Ebrahim Raisi, <\/a>long thought of as a possible successor, in a helicopter crash in May 2024.
But the regime will be eager to show Israel, the U.S. and the Iranian people that it isn\u2019t collapsing, Javed Ali, a former senior counterterrorism official and now an associate professor of public policy at the University of Michigan, said before the appointment.
\u201cBy picking the next supreme leader, that obviously is a signal,\u201d he said.
Aniseh Bassiri Tabrizi, an associate fellow in the Middle East and North Africa program at the London-based think tank Chatham House, said before the appointment that \u201cthe signal that such a nomination will give is that nothing will change.\u201d
Despite what little support there might be for Iran\u2019s new supreme leader, without regime change in Iran, leaders would presumably maintain the same \u201ciron grip on control through the institutions of power,\u201d Ali said.
The Assembly of Experts last convened to select a new leader in 1989, when it chose the elder Khamenei. The new leader is required to be a man and an Islamic cleric under Iranian law.
Chantal Da Silva reports on world news for NBC News Digital and is based in London.
© 2026 NBCUniversal Media, LLC<\/p>\n

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news AlertsThere are no new alerts at this timeMojtaba Khamenei has been named Iran\u2019s new supreme leader, succeeding his father just more than a week after he was killed in U.S.-Israeli strikes.A statement from the Assembly of Experts \u2014 the panel of Shia clerics responsible under Iranian law for choosing the country\u2019s top leader \u2014 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":203480,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-203479","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-us","8":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203479","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=203479"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203479\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/203480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=203479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=203479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=203479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}