The slain leader’s son, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, has been appointed by Iran’s ruling clerics as the country’s new supreme leader, defying threats from the United States and Israel to oppose him.
Nine days after US-Israeli strikes killed the elder Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and plunged the Middle East into war, the clerical government’s Assembly of Experts convened to choose their next leader.
Mojtaba Khamenei, 56, “is appointed and introduced as the third leader of the sacred system of the Islamic Republic of Iran, based on the decisive vote of the respected representatives of the Assembly of Experts”, the clerical body said in a statement.
It said that the clerical body “did not hesitate for a minute” in choosing a new leader, despite “the brutal aggression of the criminal America and the evil Zionist regime”.
US President Donald Trump has previously dismissed the younger Khamenei as a “lightweight” and insisted again on Sunday that he should have a say in the new leader’s appointment.
“If he doesn’t get approval from us, he’s not going to last long,” he told ABC News before the announcement was made.
US President Donald Trump speaks during a press conference in the Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House in Washington, DC, on February 20, 2026.
But Tehran’s top diplomat said Sunday that the decision was Iran’s alone, adding it would “allow nobody to interfere in our domestic affairs”.
Speaking on NBC’s “Meet the Press”, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi went on to demand Trump “apologise to people of the region” for starting the war.
The younger Khamenei is regarded as a conservative figure, notably because of his ties with the Revolutionary Guards, the ideological arm of the Islamic republic’s military.
Israel’s military had previously warned any successor that “we will not hesitate to target you”. CHANNELS TV
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