Iran clerics choose Khamenei’s son as next supreme leader

“Mojtaba Khamenei has emerged as an enigmatic but powerful figure in the Iranian system,” United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI), a nonprofit and nonpartisan policy organization, wrote in an assessment. Khamenei serves as “a combination of aide-de-camp, confidant, gatekeeper, and power broker,” UANI wrote. The organization said his early years were colored by his father’s revolutionary preaching against the then-ruling shah of Iran, and he experienced his father being forced into exile for years.