This handout picture taken in Tehran on October 3, 2024, and provided by the office of Iran's supreme leader, shows Mojtaba Khamenei, one of the children of Iran’s slain supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed on February 28, 2026 in a US-Israeli military strike. - / AFP
Iran's ruling clerics on Sunday, March 8, appointed the slain leader's son, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, 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."
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