Mojtaba Khamenei Declared As Iran’s Next Leader
Last week, President Trump, U.S., noted that declaring Mojtaba Khamenei as Iran’s next leader would be "unacceptable" and a huge mistake. As of March 8th, 2026, however, Iran has vowed to name him as their new supreme leader. Succeeding his father just a week after he was killed by U.S.-Israeli strikes, Khamenei has been selected as the third leader of the Islamic Republic, according to IRIB state TV reports.
At just 56 years old, Khamenei has been viewed as a “hard-line figure with close ties to the powerful Revolutionary Guard.” As a politician and cleric, he’s known as a strong figure, but one lacking religious credentials. While the younger Khamenei was considered a potential leader prior to his father’s attack and death, the older Khamenei was seen as a better fit.
According to NBC News, “Mojtaba Khamenei has not been heard from since the start of the conflict.” In this unsurprising, but controversial pick, Trump told NPR the decision is a waste of time, calling Khamenei's son a “lightweight.”
To date, while there might be little support for Iran’s new leader, Javed Ali, a former senior counterterrorism official and now an associate professor of public policy at the University of Michigan, noted that without regime change in Iran, the leaders would basically maintain the same sense of “iron grip on control through the institutions of power.”
Calling Khamenei, “his father on steroids,” Fox News reports, "The rise of the younger Khamenei expedites trendlines seen in Iranian politics and national security for years," said Behnam Ben Taleblu, senior director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies' Iran Program. "From one Khamenei to another, things in Iran can be expected to go from bad to worse if this regime survives."
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Photo Credit: ©Getty Images / REZA B / Contributor
Originally published March 10, 2026.
