Khamenei's son: Iran Experts: Key Role In Protest Crackdown: Potential Successor As Supreme Leader

There are few anecdotes about him, and pictures, at least ones that have appeared publicly, are scarce.

The younger Khamenei operates behind an elaborate security structure, an overlapping world that stretches from Iran's Revolutionary Guards to the motorcycle-riding Basiji.

That accumulation of control was used to outflank reformists such as Hashemi Rafsanjani and Hossein Ali Montazeri, revered figures of the Islamic Revolution who years ago had questioned the senior Khamenei's qualifications as supreme leader.

The violence that has erupted over the last week -- state media have reported that 10 to 19 people have died -- were in part the result of a crackdown by forces close to Mojtaba Khamenei, who backs Ahmadinejad and shares his Islamic fervor.

"This coup taking place is a political liquidation against the old guard by reckless people like Motjaba and Ahmadinejad," said Mehdi Khalaji, an expert on Iran with The Washington Institute for Near East Policy. "But I don't think they will win."

Mojtaba Khamenei is a secretive man who doesn't want to "be on people's tongues," said Mohsen Sazegara, an Iranian journalist and former government official. "Nobody knows much about him."

Khalaji said the supreme leader immersed himself in literature, novels and music, was friends with intellectuals and spent time in jail with Marxists when he was younger, but the son "grew up in a very different atmosphere, a postrevolutionary generation."

Analysts say Mojtaba Khamenei lacks the religious and political stature to overcome the opposition he would face in the Assembly of Experts, the body charged with selecting the supreme leader. His father, 69, is believed to have influence over about half of the assembly's 86 seats, but the board is headed by Rafsanjani and includes other reformists who would likely block an attempt for the younger Khamenei to succeed his father.

Article is about halfway down the page;

Iranian Ruler’s Dynastic Bent
Mojtaba Khamenei – a Chip off the Old Block

http://www.debka-net-weekly.com/issue.pl?username=&inumber=171

DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s intelligence and counterintelligence sources reveal that the hard-line ruler, Khamenei, aged 65, has big plans for his son, the favorite of his six children. He has put him in charge of an undercover unit tasked with manufacturing terror attacks against the United States and its allies inside the Muslim republics of Central Asia and the Caucasus. US troops and agents in Uzbekistan and Azerbaijan will be targeted.

Mojtaba will be answerable directly to his father’s bureau.

Khamenei junior’s induction into Iran’s ruthless “revolutionary” hierarchy is one of the regime’s most tightly-kept secrets. While his father is grooming him as heir apparent to take over one of Iran’s most important exports, international terror, very few details of his identity have been made public. Believed to be in his thirties, he is married to the daughter of the new Speaker of the Iranian parliament, the ultra-conservative Haddad-Aadel Gholam-Ali.

The clandestine unit he now heads was established a year ago with a huge budget and a broad operational mandate. Not satisfied with the job, Mojtaba is impatient to attain control of the entire international terror machine run from or sponsored by Tehran. But the older Khamenei thinks he needs more experience before he is given additional powers.

Nonetheless, in the past year Mojtaba managed to climb into the key position of sole coordinator between the Iranian regime and al Qaeda in Iran and abroad, a job formerly split among senior Revolutionary Guards officers, the Islamic Propaganda organization and other groups which have long been in close touch with Islamic terrorist groups around the world.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.