Mojtaba Khomenei chosen as Iran's new Supreme Leader
And, as Yoda so brilliantly said, "Now matters will be worse."
He was always the front-runner. Close to his father for three decades, in part driving his father’s policies to every more brutal, punishing, and repressive levels, he has always done just one thing: he has made matters worse for the Iranian people.
First, a few pertinent things:
In the Israeli bombing of the late Ali Khomenei’s compound, his father was killed, his mother was killed, his own wife was killed, and one of his sons was killed. That is going to make him much more dangerous than he was before, for now there is blood vengeance involved.
Note the black hat. That indicates he is descended DIRECTLY from the Prophet Mohammad. This gives him tremendous status in the country.
He is an imam, but not one of stature. His father wasn’t, either. Mojtaba does teach at Qom seminary, but still, he is no great Islamic philosopher or religious authority. The Ayatollah Khomeini, who designed and pulled off the Iranian Revolution of 1978-79, had the highest ranking of any Shi’a cleric in history. Mojtaba, like his father, is theologically weak.
0He’s got a lots and lots and lots of blood on his hands. During the 2009 protest cycle, the most serious since the revolution before the Mahsa Amini protests began, he ran the Basij, the on-the-streets secret police that rounded people up, tortured them, and killed them. This is the time in which he gained a reputation for brutality that surpassed even that of his father.
How will this shake out in Iran?
It’s suicide—unless Iran has multiple functioning nuclear weapons right now.
But they probably don’t. But Iran cannot win against Israel and the United States, though this is a thoroughly illegitimate war.
What it does mean is that the Iranian people have a targeted painted on them that’s got a tighter bullseye than before, and a better weapon than before, because Mojtaba Khomenei loves tracking people through devices and the Internet and newspaper photos—of which there have been plenty—and they will die.
Mojtaba has been interwoven into IRGC for decades.
The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps was formed by the Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979, just after the Iranian Revolution, to ensure internal allegiance and obeisance to the Islamic state. It grew into the hydra that has been running Iran absent a Supreme Leader for the last week.
After Ali Khomenei came to power, he started appointing many Revolutionary Guard commanders to top political positions, thus blurring the line between military and civilian authority. Writes Al Jazeera:
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, Ali Ardeshir Larijani, the secretary of the supreme council of national security, Ezzatolah Zarghami, the head of state television and radio services, Mohsen Rezai, the secretary of the expediency council, and Mohammad Forouzandeh, the head of the Mostazafan Foundation, are all former members of the IRGC who were appointed by Khamenei.
Since 2000, the Revolutionary Guards have become the dominant group in economic, political, defense policy, and Iran’s nuclear program.
The Guards’ emergence was already apparent during the administration of the reformist president Mohammad Khatami, when they sought to block Khatami’s supporters from political power and ascendency.
Between 2003 and 2004, more Revolutionary Guards officers saw their way into local and national politics and the IRGC acquired all the trappings of a state within a state, effectively creating a garrison state in Iran.
The Exploding Economic Power of the IRGC—and Khomenei
By 2005, the Guards had come to oversee many economic sectors, including oil, construction, agriculture, mining, transport, the defense industry and import-export companies.
The Guards were also thought to control much of Iran’s business interests in Dubai, where some 9,000 Iranian businesses were registered and 400,000 Iranian nationals constituted a quarter of Dubai’s resident population. [Just take heed on this.]
And speaking of money, Mojtaba Khamenei is widely believed to control significant financial assets in banks such as Bank Ayandeh. Bloomberg:
A year-long investigation by Bloomberg, citing assessments from people familiar with the matter, reported in January 2026 that Khamenei is linked to an offshore financial network used to hold and move assets outside Iran. The reported holdings include high-value real estate in London and Dubai, as well as interests connected to shipping, banking relationships, and hospitality assets in Europe. According to the investigation, the assets were generally not held in Khamenei’s name but structured through intermediaries and layered corporate entities across multiple jurisdictions. Some of these assets have since been sold or restructured amid increased scrutiny.
Not his father’s choice
Ali Khomenei did not want his son Mojtaba to be Supreme Leader after his death. His choice seems to have been Arafi, who, though still purple-edged conservative, appears not to be the butcher Mojtaba is.
Nor does he sit well with the Khatami, the children of Ayatollah Khomeini, who felt that the Iranian regime was becoming too conservative in taking women’s rights, or even the craven Hashemi Rafsanjani, who speaks untruth with both sides of his mouth. Nor does it sit well with Reza Pahlavi, who wants his father’s throne back, nor with Iranian politician and physician President Masoud Pezeshkian, just pilloried for apologizing to bombed Arab states. He will not last long, nor likely live long.
The bottom line is that now, for the Iranian people and for everyone but Vladimir Putin and the Chinese, matters will be worse.
HORRIFYING!