The Iranian clerical body responsible for selecting Iran’s highest authority on Sunday, March 8, 2026, announced the selection of Mojitaba Khamenei, the son of the late spreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei as the new leader of Iran.
Accordingly, the Iranian clerical body called on Iranians to rally behind Mojitaba nd preserve national unity.
This was contained in a statement carried by the Iranian state media, stating that the assembly said Mojitaba Khamenei had been chosen through what it described as a “decisive vote”.
The body also urged citizens, “especially the elites and intellectuals of the seminaries and universities”, to pledge allegiance to the new leadership and safeguard unity at a critical moment for Iran.
The move could lead to a further escalation of the war, given Donald Trump had already acknowledged that Mojtaba Khamenei was the most likely successor and made it clear he considered him an “unacceptable” choice.
President Trump had declared on Sunday that Iran’s next supreme leader was “not going to last long” if Tehran did not get his approval first.
When asked about the appointment during an interview with the Times of Israel published late on Sunday, Trump was reported to have said: “We’ll see what happens.”
In the same interview, Trump said a decision on when to end the war would be a “mutual” one, together with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Trump said that Iran would have succeeded in destroying Israel if he and Netanyahu had not been around, saying; “Iran was going to destroy Israel and everything else around it… We’ve worked together. We’ve destroyed a country that wanted to destroy Israel,” the US President said.
However, the appointment of Mojtaba Khamenei was welcomed by Yemen’s Houthi rebels, who are backed by the Iranian regime.
“We congratulate the Islamic Republic of Iran, its leadership and people, on the selection of Sayyid Mojtaba Khamenei as Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution at this important and pivotal juncture,” the group said in a statement on Telegram.
It called his selection “a new victory for the Islamic Revolution and a resounding blow to the enemies of the Islamic Republic and the enemies of the nation”.
The Israeli military said it launched a wave of strikes targeting “regime infrastructure” in central Iran on Monday, the first such announcement since the appointment of the new supreme leader.
The military also announced strikes on Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Iranian state media also showed a projectile said to be launched at Israel bearing the slogan, “At your command, Sayyid Mojtaba”, using an Islamic honorific.
Mojtaba Khamenei’s elevation marks the first time since the 1979 Islamic revolution that Iran’s supreme leadership has passed from father to son. It is a development likely to ignite debate inside Iran about the emergence of a dynastic system in a state founded explicitly to overthrow hereditary rule after the shah.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who ruled for 37 years, was killed in a US-Israeli strike on Tehran on 28 February, on the first day of the war with Iran.
Across Iran’s political and security establishment, officials swiftly moved to welcome the appointment of Mojtaba Khamenei as the country’s new supreme leader.
Mojtaba Khamenei could lead the country under the current sensitive conditions, top Iranian security official Ali Larijani said, calling for unity around the new leader.
State media reported the leadership of Iran’s armed forces pledged allegiance to him, while the speaker of parliament hailed the decision and described following Mojtaba Khamenei as a “religious and national duty”.
The country’s security chief said the new leader was capable of guiding Iran through the current sensitive moment, and the Revolutionary Guards declared they stood ready to follow him, signalling broad backing from the country’s core institutions.
Earlier in the day, in a post on X in Farsi, the Israeli military said it would continue pursuing every successor of Ali Khamenei and would pursue every person who sought to appoint a successor for him.
For many analysts, Mojtaba Khamenei’s appointment is a symbolic move designed to make the regime still appear strong and determined not to bow to western pressure.
The 56-year-old cleric has never held elected office nor formally occupied a senior position within Iran’s government. He has spent much of his life at the centre of power in Iran while remaining largely out of public view.
Born in 1969 in the north-eastern city of Mashhad, Khamenei was raised within the political and clerical world that emerged after the 1979 revolution. As a young man, he studied theology in the seminaries of Qom and reportedly took part in the final stages of the Iran-Iraq war.
Unlike many figures in Iran’s leadership, Khamenei never pursued elected office or a prominent government role. Instead, he gradually became an influential presence inside his father’s office, where he was widely seen as part of a small circle managing political access to the supreme leader.
Over the years, he cultivated close relationships with conservative clerics and elements of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), a connection analysts say strengthened his standing within the system.
His name surfaced publicly during the disputed 2009 presidential election, when reformist figures accused him of playing a role in supporting the security crackdown that followed mass protests. But he has never discussed the issue of succession publicly.
To his supporters, Mojtaba Khamenei represents continuity with the ideological line established by Ayatollah Khomeini and maintained by his father.
But to his critics, Mojitaba Khamenei’s rise has raised some uncomfortable questions about the concentration of power – and the possibility of hereditary leadership in a state founded in revolt against monarchy.
