BAKU, Azerbaijan, March 9. Mojtaba Hosseini Khamenei, the son of Iran’s assassinated Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, has been elected as Iran's new Supreme Leader, Trend reports.
Mojtaba Hosseini Khamenei was born in 1969 in Mashhad, Iran. He received his initial education at a religious madrasa. In 1999, he continued his religious studies in the city of Qom and attained the rank of a cleric.
In 1999, he married Zahra, the daughter of conservative politician and member of the Expediency Council Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel. The couple has two sons and a daughter. His wife was killed as a result of a U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran on February 28.
During the Iran–Iraq War (1980–1988), Mojtaba Hosseini Khamenei fought as part of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and is reported to have considerable influence within the IRGC. The connections he established during the war later contributed to the growth of his influence. It was later also reported that his influence significantly increased within Iran’s Basij forces.
In 2005 and 2009, he was one of the main supporters of former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and supported his election to the presidency.
The 56-year-old Mojtaba Hosseini Khamenei rarely appears in public. He has never officially held a political position. However, in the current structure of power in Iran, he is considered one of the influential figures.
For many years, he worked in the office of the Supreme Leader of Iran. His position has often been compared to that of Ahmad Khomeini - the son of the founder of the Islamic Revolution, Ruhollah Khomeini. This is because Ahmad Khomeini was one of the trusted figures of Ruhollah Khomeini in the first years after the Islamic Revolution.