Mojtaba Khamenei: New leader is a supreme insider - but also a mystery

Crowds in Tehran greeted the announcement of the country's new supreme leader by chanting: “God's hand is still upon us, Khamenei is still our leader.”

- By Patrick Wintour

As the world economy grinds to a slow halt, Iran is selling the elevation of Mojtaba Khamenei as a sign of continuity for a country determined to show its defiance of the west. Yet in reality he injects an unpredictable, even mysterious, element into the crisis, since just as he is unknown to Washington, so he is a figure of deep obscurity to ordinary Iranians.By contrast, the first supreme leader, Ruhollah Khomeini, led Iran to revolution in 1979 and the second, Mojtaba’s father, Ali Khamenei, had been president for eight years before he was chosen by the Assembly of Experts within a day of Khomeini’s death.

Before he was catapulted to power, Mojtaba had lived the life of backroom bureaucrat, acting as “the path to access to his father”, as a 2007 US diplomatic cable explained.

There is only one video of him speaking in public, to a jurisprudence class, and there has been no substantive interview marking out his views. Yet as the consummate insider, acting as deputy chief of staff in the supreme leader’s office for two decades, he has long been the candidate of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. One western diplomat said his selection “shows Iran is doubling down on the security state. The new leader will be even more beholden to the IRGC.”

That is because the IRGC had to overcome many obstacles to ensure its candidate took the helm. It fended off a rearguard attempt to delay his appointment so that the choice might be better made in a different political atmosphere - probably at the end of the war.