People drive past a huge billboard showing the late Iranian supreme leaders Ayatollah?Ruhollah Khomeini?(L), Ayatollah?Ali?Khamenei?(C), and the new Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah?Mojtaba?Khamenei?(R) at Valiasr Square in Tehran, Iran, 10 March?2026. The late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed during a joint US-Israel military operation across Iran in the early hours of 28 February 2026. EPA/ABEDIN TAHERKENAREH Iran's Revolutionary Guards forced through the choice of Mojtaba Khamenei as the new supreme leader, seeing him as a more pliant version of his father who would back their hardline policies.
Khamenei's selection may add up to a more aggressive stance abroad and sterner internal repression, said three senior Iranian sources, a reformist former official and another insider.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said last week that any leader appointed by the current Iranian leadership would "be an unequivocal target for elimination."
(Reporting by Jerusalem bureau; editing by Rami Ayyub, Andrew Heavens and Sharon Singleton)