Ali Khamenei’s Death Brings Khomeini’s Grandson Into Focus | EUROtoday

March 1 (Reuters) – A grandson of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the late founding father of the Islamic Republic of Iran, is prone to determine prominently within the deliberations of the clerics who will decide who replaces Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as Supreme Leader.

The killing of Khamenei, 86, in a U.S.-Israeli assault has introduced new urgency to the query of who would be the subsequent Supreme Leader, a long-simmering problem over which there had been no readability regardless of his age.

Hassan Khomeini is probably the most seen of the late Ayatollah’s 15 grandchildren and is seen as a relative average inside Iran’s clerical institution. He enjoys shut ties to reformists together with former presidents Mohammed Khatami and Hassan Rouhani, who each pursued insurance policies of engagement with the West when in workplace.

Khomeini, 53, holds a symbolically necessary position in public life as custodian of his grandfather’s mausoleum in southern Tehran. He has by no means served in authorities.

Some politicians inside Iran have seen him as a rival to hardliners who gained sway underneath Khamenei, notably his son, Mojtaba.

The case for putting in a average successor to Khamenei gained momentum amongst some Iranian politicians within the wake of unrest that swept Iran in January as a method of shoring up the Islamic Republic within the face of widening dissent.

While loyal to the Islamic Republic established after the Shah was toppled in 1979, Khomeini has a monitor report of urging reform and has often voiced dissent towards authorities.

In 2021, he criticized the Guardian Council – the department of Iran’s theocracy liable for vetting presidential candidates – after it barred reformists from working.

The council’s transfer paved the best way for the victory of hardliner Ebrahim Raisi, who died in a helicopter crash in 2024.

“You can’t pick someone for me and tell me to vote for them!” Khomeini mentioned on the time.

He additionally demanded accountability after Mahsa Amini, a younger Iranian girl, died in 2022 after being taken into custody by morality police, accused of violating conservative costume codes – an incident that ignited countrywide protests.

Authorities “must transparently and precisely account for what has happened to this 22-year-old girl under the pretext of ‘guidance and education’,” he mentioned.

But, reflecting his loyalty to the system, the mid-ranking cleric additionally criticised protesters who chanted towards Khamenei.

During the unrest that swept Iran in December and January – the deadliest because the 1979 revolution – he rallied behind the institution, accusing rioters of serving Israel, participating in a pro-government march, and likening a number of the violence to the actions of Islamic State.

In a condolence letter, Khomeini mentioned Khamenei would eternally “be the hero of the people of Iran and Muslims”, including: “The noble people of Iran will once again walk the path of the Imam (Khomeini) by overcoming this incident.”

A detailed good friend of Khomeini’s, chatting with Reuters in 2015, described him as a progressive theologian, particularly on the subject of music, girls’s rights, and social freedom. He follows traits on social media and is excited by Western philosophy as a lot as Islamic thought.

His spouse, Sayyeda Fatima, is the daughter of an Ayatollah, and so they have 4 youngsters.

Some reformists urged him to run for the presidency in 2012, however he declined.

Khomeini supported the Rouhani authorities that negotiated the 2015 nuclear settlement, which eased sanctions in return for limits on the nuclear programme – till U.S. President Donald Trump tore it up in 2018.

He has spoken brazenly about financial hardships endured by Iranians throughout years of sanctions imposed over the nuclear program.

A decade in the past, Khomeini sought to run in an election for the Assembly of Experts, the physique liable for choosing the Supreme Leader.

He secured an preliminary nod of approval for his candidacy from Khamenei, who reportedly gave his blessing whereas additionally cautioning Khomeini towards doing any hurt to his grandfather’s identify. But he was later disqualified by the Guardian Council.

Though his non secular credentials had been cited for the disqualification – Khomeini holds the clerical rank of Hojatoleslam, one notch under Ayatollah – the transfer was seen as supposed to move off a possible problem by the reformist camp.

In 2008, he was broadly thought to be criticising Iran’s highly effective Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) when he mentioned in an interview that these claiming loyalty to his grandfather’s legacy ought to comply with his order that the army should keep out of politics. He however enjoys shut ties to the Guards, an elite drive tasked with safeguarding the Islamic Revolution.

During the 12-day air warfare between Israel and Iran final yr, Khomeini wrote to Khamenei praising his management and saying Iranian missiles had turn out to be a nightmare for Israel and a supply of satisfaction for the Iranian nation, in line with Jamaran, an Iranian information web site devoted to Khomeini’s reminiscence.

Khomeini has described Israel because the “evil Zionist regime” and “a cancerous tumor” backed by the West, and has mentioned the Muslim world ought to make itself robust to confront Zionism, in line with statements reported by Jamaran.

He is fluent in Arabic and English, in line with the biography, and was a eager footballer till the age of 21, when his grandfather insisted he go to town of Qom to review Islamic theology.

(Additional reporting by Parisa Hafezi; Writing by Tom Perry, Editing by William Maclean and Janet Lawrence)