Khamenei replaces Khamenei: Iran defies Trump, signals continuity

After more than a week of massive US and Israeli bombardments, around 1,200 reported Iranian deaths, seven fallen US soldiers, damaged infrastructure, skyrocketing oil prices, blocked ships and grounded flights, Iran got the new leader that everyone expected for years.

Mojtaba Khamenei, the 56-year-old son of the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has been named Iran’s new supreme leader as the Islamic regime faces an existential crisis. The message from the Assembly of Experts, the body empowered to appoint the new leader, was clear to Iran and the world. The Velayat-e-Faqih, the Shiite political doctrine underpinning Iran’s Islamic Republic, would continue, the resistance would not be cowed, and the change that many Iranians longed for was nowhere near.

Khamenei was appointed the new leader barely a week after Iranian authorities confirmed the death of his 86-year-old father in the initial round of US-Israeli strikes. Amid rumours about the logistical difficulties of holding a vote and speculation over whether the war could strengthen a reformist voice, the decision was swift and unambiguous.

“The message is very clear. It's a message of resoluteness sent by the Iranian government,” said FRANCE 24’s Siavosh Ghazi, reporting from Tehran the morning after the announcement. “The members of the Assembly of Experts have stated that he is continuing his father’s legacy…In effect, the result of the war that was started by [US President] Donald Trump and [Israeli Prime Minister] Benjamin Netanyahu is to replace an 86-year-old with a 56-year-old. So, nothing changes, and the message is: We will stay the course – and continue to resist the Americans and the Israelis.”

To prove the point, Iranian state media followed up the announcement, which was broadcast Monday around 1am local time, with a report of a new attack on Israel. “Iran fired a first wave of missiles under Ayatollah Sayyid Mojtaba Khamenei toward [the Palestinian] occupied territories,” declared state radio stations while state TV aired a photograph of a projectile bearing the slogan, "At Your Command, Sayyid Mojtaba", using an Islamic honorific.

Iran’s oil-rich Gulf neighbours also received a business-as-usual message hours later, with Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait and Qatar reporting new explosions and attacks on Monday. The Asian markets, opening for a new week of trading, reflected the economic strains of Iran’s blockage of the Strait of Hormuz through which a fifth of the world's oil is transported. Oil prices soared to a historic high of $120 per barrel on Monday morning before falling in a whiplash trading session.

Read moreOil prices hit historic high after Iran names new supreme leader

‘Going full dynasty’

Nearly half a century after the Islamic Revolution overthrew the Pahlavi monarchy, the appointment of another Khamenei as leader of the republic was a statement of defiance. During Ali Khamenei’s final years, experts examining likely succession candidates noted the difficulty of choosing his son for a regime that “prides itself on overturning thousands of years of monarchical rule”.

But in the end, the dynastic transfer of power passed without a hitch. “This is not surprising in the sense that all revolutions tend to replace what they destroyed with something very similar,” said Rouzbeh Parsi, a history professor at Sweden’s Lund University. “So, in that sense, going full dynasty is not necessarily surprising. There's also an element of this in Shia theology, where the notion of sacredness and the notion of charisma and leadership goes in succession within the family.”

While his father was in office, Mojtaba Khamenei did not have an official government position. But his years of work at the supreme leader’s Beyt office as a sort of aide-de-camp, personal assistant and confidant to his father put him at the centre of political, economic and, most importantly, security networks in Iran.

Iran’s supreme leader is the ultimate authority over all branches of government and head of a security establishment that includes the army, navy, intelligence institutions and, above all, the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), a parallel armed force that includes allied organisations such as the Basij militia.

The IRGC also wields economic clout, accounting for nearly 25% of the Iranian economy, according to some estimates.

Khamenei was believed to be his octogenarian father’s right-hand man for several years, fueling speculation that the son was effectively managing the day-to-day running of the state.

Security links, economic assets, religious credentials

Born in 1969 in the city of Mashhad, Khamenei fought in the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war with an IRGC division, several of whom ascended to powerful intelligence positions within the force, cementing his links within an organisation that grew to become the country’s most influential institution.

After his father became supreme leader in 1989, he had access to the billions of dollars and business assets spread across Iran's many bonyads, or foundations funded from state industries and other wealth once held by the former shah.

During his father’s rule, Khamenei used his proximity to the leadership to amass his own power, according to US and Israeli sources. US diplomatic cables published by WikiLeaks in the late 2000s suggested that he served as his father’s “principal gatekeeper” and had been forming his own power base within the country. 

At a time of crisis, Khamenei’s familiarity with the ropes of administration and knowledge of the shadowy workings of the IRGC – also known as “the Guards” – was viewed as an asset, according to experts.

Khamenei also takes over the position of the Islamic Republic’s spiritual leader with the required religious credentials, unlike his father, who was a midlevel cleric when he replaced Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic republic in 1989.

Khamenei’s clerical studies include instruction in a respected seminary in the holy city of Qom. It was followed by more than a decade of teaching dars-e kharej — the highest level of seminary instruction in Shiite Islamic jurisprudence. He reached the clerical rank of ayatollah in 2022, according to the Qom seminary’s news agency.

This puts him in a secure position in Iran’s power circles, according to experts. “We have to remember that his father needed a decade or so to shore up his own credibility and his own ability to run the system. Now, Mojtaba comes with stronger cards in terms of his connections, but also a weaker position in that he's going to be more dependent on those groups, most likely the Revolutionary Guards,” said Parsi.

‘Replacing the Taliban with the Taliban’

The second of Ali Khamenei’s six children, the new supreme leader was believed to be extremely close to his father. The 56-year-old cleric takes over the post a week after his father, his mother Mansoureh Khojasteh Bagherzadeh, his wife Zahra Adel and one of his sons was killed in the US-Israeli strikes, according to the Iranian government.

The loss is unlikely to see him leaning towards a diplomatic solution to end the current conflict. It also dashes hopes of a reformist faction taking over or influencing the office of the supreme leader.

“I think for the moment, they're all united in that they see an existential threat in the Israeli and American war, and that this is something they need to deal with first,” said Parsi.

Iran’s proxies in the region, including the Houthis in Yemen and Lebanon’s Hezbollah have also fallen in line, pledging allegiance to the new leader.

Across the Persian Gulf, Iranian attacks on the oil-rich Gulf monarchies in retaliation for the US-Israeli strikes have also strengthened the Islamic regime’s ability to disrupt global oil shipments, which in turn determine the power balance in the region, according to some experts.

“What Iran has done is increase the pressure on the Americans, that the whole global system, that the Americans, in a sense, underwrite,” said Parsi. “The Iranians are able to influence what is happening and are making it very difficult for the Americans to contain this conflict to just one country, so the rest of the world would go about their business. That is not the way things are going. The fact that the Americans don't seem to have a clear strategy of what they want with this war, just makes it easier for the Iranians to, in a sense, play this game.”

Last week, Trump declared that he wanted a say in the appointment of Iran’s new leader. That was not to be. As supreme leader, Khamenei, like his father, is now high in the sights of US-Israeli decapitation strikes. But the Islamic regime has delivered its message of continuity no matter the decimation of top personnel.

For some experts, Iran’s appointment of a newer version of an old leader underscores the failure of the US in the region, which was in stark focus during the 2021 Taliban takeover in neighbouring Afghanistan.

Several Iran experts took to social media on Monday to elaborate the point. “The U.S. spent 20 years and trillions of dollars replacing the Taliban with the Taliban,” said Iranian political analyst Ali Alizadeh on X. “Trump replaced Ayatollah Khamenei with Ayatollah Khamenei in just 9 days. The most efficient U.S. president ever,” he noted wryly.