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Washington Post
05-08-2025
- Politics
- Washington Post
Iran's president appoints moderate politician to top security post
TEHRAN, Iran — Iran's President Masoud Pezeshkian has appointed veteran politician Ali Larijani as the new secretary for the country's highest security body, the Supreme National Security Council, state media reported on Tuesday. The decree, reported by the state-run IRNA news agency, marks Larijani's return to a post he previously held for two years from 2005 to 2007. He replaces Gen. Ali Akbar Ahmadian, who had been in the role since 2023
Reuters
23-06-2025
- Politics
- Reuters
Son of Iranian leader Khamenei is hardliner with backroom influence
June 23 (Reuters) - Mojtaba Khamenei is one of the most influential figures in the Iranian clerical establishment headed by his father, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and among the figures seen as a candidate to succeed him as leader of the Islamic Republic. A mid-ranking cleric who studied under religious conservatives in the seminaries of Qom, Mojtaba is a hardliner with close ties to the Revolutionary Guards, the force mandated to safeguard the Islamic Republic led by Khamenei since 1989. Carrying the clerical rank of Hojjatoleslam, Mojtaba, 55, has never held a formal position in the Islamic Republic's government, exercising his influence behind the scenes as the gatekeeper to his father, according to Iran watchers. His role has long been a point of controversy in Iran, with critics rejecting any hint of dynastic politics in a country that overthrew a U.S.-backed monarch in 1979. Khamenei has himself indicated opposition to the idea of dynastic succession. The U.S. Treasury Department imposed sanctions on Mojtaba in 2019, saying he represented the Supreme Leader in "an official capacity despite never being elected or appointed to a government position" aside from working his father's office. Its website said Khamenei had delegated some of his responsibilities to Mojtaba, whom it said had worked closely with the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps' Quds Force and the Basij, a religious militia affiliated with the Guards, "to advance his father's destabilising regional ambitions and oppressive domestic objectives". Over the past 20 years, Mojtaba has built close ties with the Guards, giving him added leverage across Iran's political and security apparatus, sources told Reuters. Mojtaba has been a target of protesters' anger in demonstrations since 2009, particularly during months of unrest that swept Iran over the death of a young woman in police custody in 2022, after she was arrested for allegedly breaching the Islamic Republic's strict dress codes. He has appeared at loyalist rallies, but has rarely spoken in public. Last year, a video was widely shared in which he announced the suspension of Islamic jurisprudence classes he was teaching at Qom, fuelling speculation about the reasons. He bares a strong resemblance to his father, and wears the black turban of a sayyed, indicating his family traces its lineage to the Prophet Mohammad. Critics say Mojtaba lacks the clerical credentials to become Supreme Leader - Hojjatoleslam is a notch below the rank of Ayatollah - the position held by his father and Ruhollah Khomeini, who founded the Islamic Republic. But he has remained in the frame, particularly after another leading candidate for the role - the former President Ebrahim Raisi - died in a helicopter crash in 2024. A U.S. diplomatic cable written in 2007 and published by WikiLeaks cited three Iranian sources describing Mojtaba as an avenue to reach Khamenei. He has opposed Iran's reformist camp that has favoured engagement with the West and has been embodied by figures such as the former presidents Mohammad Khatami and Hassan Rouhani. Mojtaba was widely believed to have been behind the sudden rise of hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the 2005 presidential election. Mehdi Karroubi, a reformist cleric who ran in the 2005 election, wrote a letter to Khamenei at the time objecting to what he alleged was Mojtaba's role in supporting Ahmadinejad. Khamenei rejected the accusation. Mojtaba also backed Ahmadinejad in 2009 when he ran again and won a second term in a disputed election that resulted in anti-government protests that were violently suppressed by the Basij and other security forces. His wife is the daughter of a prominent hardliner, the former parliament speaker Gholamali Haddadadel. Mojtaba was born in 1969 in the city of Mashhad, growing up as his father was helping to lead the opposition to the Shah, and as a young man served in the Iran-Iraq war.
SBS Australia
18-06-2025
- Politics
- SBS Australia
Who is Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader?
Israel's strikes on Iran this month mark Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's most serious crisis yet. Source: Anadolu / Getty images Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has spent more than three decades as Iran's supreme leader, ruling since the death of his predecessor, Ruhollah Khomeini, in 1989. At first dismissed as weak and an unlikely successor to the Islamic Republic's late founder, Khamenei has steadily tightened his grip in that time to become Iran's unquestioned decision-maker. But Israel's unprecedented strikes on Iran this month mark his most serious crisis yet, threatening both the clerical system he leads and his own physical survival. With Khamenei aged 86, the issue of succession was already looming large in Iran. According to Arash Azizi, a senior fellow at Boston University who specialises in Middle Eastern politics, the "twilight of his rule" has only been "accelerated" by Israel's attacks. Khamenei is one of Iran's longest-serving leaders. Since becoming supreme leader in 1989, Khamenei has held ultimate authority over all branches of government, the military and the judiciary. While elected officials manage day-to-day affairs, no major policy proceeds without his explicit approval. Khamenei has held several posts since the Islamic Revolution and the creation of the Islamic Republic. As deputy defence minister and later president throughout much of the 1980s — including most of the Iran-Iraq War — he developed a close relationship with Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), a branch of Iran's military established after the Islamic Revolution. In 1981, he was the target of an attempted assassination that paralysed his right arm. When his predecessor Khomeini died in 1989, Khamenei was considered a surprise choice as his successor, given that he lacked both Khomeini's popular appeal and superior clerical credentials. Because he lacked the religious credentials of his predecessor Khomeini, he has repeatedly turned to his sophisticated security structure, the IRGC and the Basij — a paramilitary-religious force of hundreds of thousands of volunteers — to snuff out dissent. Karim Sadjadpour, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where he focuses on Iran and US foreign policy toward the Middle East said "an accident of history" had transformed a "weak president to an initially weak supreme leader to one of the five most powerful Iranians of the last 100 years". He is deeply sceptical of the West, particularly the US, which he accuses of seeking regime change. Yet he has shown a willingness to bend when the survival of the Islamic Republic is at stake. The concept of "heroic flexibility", first mentioned by Khamenei in 2013, allows for tactical compromises to advance his goals, mirroring Khomeini's decision in 1988 to accept a ceasefire after eight years of war with Iraq. Khamenei's guarded endorsement of Iran's 2015 nuclear deal with six world powers was another such moment, as he calculated that sanctions relief was necessary to stabilise the economy and cement his grip on power. His power also owes much to the parastatal financial empire known as Setad, worth tens of billions of dollars, which is under Khamenei's direct control and has grown hugely during his rule. Billions of dollars have been invested in the IRGC for decades to help them empower Shi'ite militias in Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen and back Syria's former president Bashar al-Assad , whose government was overthrown in 2024. It was the IRGC who crushed the protests that exploded after Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's 2009 re-election as Iranian president amid allegations of vote fraud, which was also criticised by Western countries. In 2022, Khamenei was just as ruthless in arresting, imprisoning or sometimes executing protesters enraged by the death of Amini. But the current conflict with Israel appears to represent a sudden end to this strategy. Jason Brodsky, policy director of the US-based non-profit United Against Nuclear Iran, said: "He has prided himself on deterring conflict away from Iran's borders since he assumed the supreme leadership in 1989." The scale of Israel's first attacks on Iran last week — which killed key Iranian figures including the army chief and head of the Revolutionary Guards — took the leadership by surprise at a time when it has been on the lookout for any further protests amid economic hardship. Holly Dagres, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute who specialises in Iranian social movements, said: "Indeed, the strikes have intensified already simmering tensions, and many Iranians want to see the Islamic Republic gone." "Crucially, however, most of them do not want this outcome to come at the cost of bloodshed and war." As Khamenei faces one of the most dangerous moments in the Islamic Republic's history, the so-called "Axis of Resistance" coalition with Iranian-backed militant and political groups across the Middle East to oppose Israeli and US power has also started to unravel. Ever since the Iran-backed Hamas attacked Israel in October 2023, Khamenei's regional influence has been weakening, as Israel has pounded Iran's proxies — from Hamas in Gaza to Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen and militias in Iraq.
