Well, that didn’t take long. Mojtaba Khamenei has risen to the appointment of Iran Supreme Leader, as the country’s national television news service confirmed Monday, however it has since emerged the man following his father into the post has been wounded in an unspecified incident at a time and place unknown.
AP reports television news anchors referred to the mid-level Shiite cleric as “janbaz,” or wounded by the enemy, in the “Ramadan war,” which is how media in Iranian regime refers to the current conflict.
It does not elaborate on the mystery injury. However, Khamenei’s father and his wife were killed in the February 28 Israeli airstrike in Tehran that began the fight for freedom from the brutal Islamic dictatorship.
A woman poses with a picture of Iran’s new Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei during a rally at Enghelab Square in central Tehran on March 9, 2026. Iran marked the appointment of Mojtaba to replace his father as its supreme leader with a new barrage of missiles against Israel and the Gulf states on Monday, as the Middle East war sent oil prices soaring. (Atta KENARE / AFP via Getty)
The younger Khamenei has yet to be seen since the conflict began. Indeed he has barely been seen in his entire life.
Mojtaba Khamenei has never held government office, nor given public speeches or interviews, and only a limited number of photos and videos of him have ever been published.
Even so he was announced as Iran’s new supreme leader overnight after a week of speculation, as Breitbart News reported, an awkward moment as the Islamic Republic has long criticized hereditary rule and cast itself as a more just alternative.
Iranian state media said the Assembly of Experts, Tehran’s top clerical body, did not hesitate in choosing a new leader despite “the brutal aggression of the criminal America and the evil Zionist regime”, then showed a missile ready for launch bearing the slogan, “At your command, Sayyid Mojtaba.”
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) agreed.
It issued a statement afforming they were “ready to fully obey and devote the divine orders of the Supreme Leader of the time, Ayatollah Seyyed Mojtaba Khamenei, and to preserve the values of the Islamic Revolution,” according to Iran’s Tasnim News Agency.
The Daily Mail notes the “vengeful” hard line cleric is already marked for assassination by Israel after it vowed to “eliminate” whoever succeeded the late Ayatollah.
“He’s going to have to get approval from us,” Trump explained. “If he doesn’t get approval from us he’s not going to last long. We want to make sure that we don’t have to go back every 10 years, when you don’t have a president like me that’s not going to do it.”
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