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Mojtaba Khamenei holds no official role but is one of the country’s most influential figures

As the death of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi brings forward urgent questions surrounding the country’s leadership, Mojtaba Khamenei, the powerful and secretive son of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, is poised to play a central role.

To most Iranians, the son is an enigma. He holds no public position, rarely appears in public and doesn’t give speeches. With decadeslong ties to key figures in Iran’s intelligence and security establishment, the younger Khamenei has grown powerful in the shadows, particularly under Raisi, who was seen as a pliant president without a personal power base.

Raisi was seen as being groomed to potentially succeed the supreme leader, who at the age of 85 has had health problems. As president he served as a vessel for more powerful individuals and networks to wield influence from behind the scenes.

Raisi’s death in a helicopter crash on Sunday has stirred speculation about who is likely to succeed Khamenei, and whether the next president will be as pliable for the country’s power brokers, including those surrounding Khamenei’s son and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

In recent years, many have speculated that Mojtaba Khamenei could be a front-runner to succeed his father, but Iran watchers and political analysts say that is unlikely. Instead, they say, he would be more powerful out of the spotlight.

“Mojtaba and the network around him have been running the show over the past two decades,” said Hamidreza Azizi, visiting fellow and Iran expert with the German Institute for International and Security Affairs. “Now, certainly for Khamenei himself, the main challenge is to find someone with the exact characteristics that Raisi had.”

Doing that, Azizi said, “would set the scene where Mojtaba could preserve and even expand his power while keeping his shadow role, out of public scrutiny.”

Either way, Mojtaba Khamenei, 54 years old, will play a central role as Iran reconfigures its political landscape ahead of presidential elections scheduled for late June and his father’s looming succession.

The political maneuvering will help determine the future of Iran as it deepens its engagement in regional conflicts and faces growing dissent at home.

The death of Raisi has, at least in the short term, placed a firm loyalist to Mojtaba Khamenei in the presidency. Mohammad Mokhber, who will be acting president until the elections and may run for the office, was brought by Khamenei to run the billion-dollar Setad fund, which controls holdings in real estate, industry, finance and more and is controlled by the supreme leader.

The son also holds sway in the supreme leader’s office and the business empire it controls.

Khamenei was born in 1969 in the religious city of Mashhad, when his father was becoming a leading figure in the revolutionary movement against the monarchy of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Ali Khamenei was arrested repeatedly by the Shah’s secret police, and during one raid, Mojtaba watched him being beaten, according to the supreme leader’s website.

Following the 1979 Islamic Revolution, the Khamenei family moved to Tehran, where Mojtaba attended a high school for children of the revolutionary vanguards, while his father quickly rose in the ranks of the government to become president in 1981.

Mojtaba Khamenei spent his formative years like many young Iranian men, fighting in the 1980-1988 war against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. In his battalion, he formed relationships with men who later became senior figures in Iran’s security apparatus, including Hossein Taeb, a future intelligence chief in the Revolutionary Guard, and Hossein Nejat, who would become head of the Revolutionary Guard’s unit tasked with crushing protests in Tehran.

Khamenei’s profile rose in the 1990s and particularly in the mid-2000s when reformists accused him of engineering the 2005 and 2009 presidential election victories for hard-liner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

In 2009, he was influential, through his backing of Taeb, then commander of the paramilitary Basij militia, in the violent crackdown on Green Movement protesters who were claiming the election had been stolen, according to an adviser to the Revolutionary Guard.

Khamenei’s activities attracted attention abroad. The U.S. imposed sanctions on him in 2019, accusing him of working closely, on behalf of his father, with the Revolutionary Guard and the Basij “to advance his father’s destabilizing regional ambitions and oppressive domestic objectives.”

In 2022, nationwide protests again swept Iran following the death in police custody of Mahsa Amini, a young woman accused of violating the country’s Islamic dress code. The son of the supreme leader quickly became the target of protesters’ anger. Mir-Hossein Mousavi, a former presidential candidate who is under house arrest, called on Khamenei to dispel the rumors about his son succeeding him. The ayatollah didn’t respond.

The son’s rise has fed speculation that he is being positioned to succeed his father. That is an unlikely scenario, said Mehdi Khalaji, a theologian trained in the holy Iranian city of Qom and author of a 2023 book on Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

“The idea that Mojtaba’s ambition is to be the next supreme leader is a total myth,” Khalaji said. “Based on historical experience, I don’t think Khamenei would indicate anyone, even his son, as successor.”

The younger Khamenei lacks several qualities formally required of a supreme leader, including the needed religious credentials or executive experience. Ali Khamenei and his predecessor Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who founded the Islamic Republic, dismissed the idea of passing on power to one’s child as un-Islamic and monarchic.

“With decades of experience in the corridors of power, [Mojtaba Khamenei’s] network in the regime is unparalleled,” said Saeid Golkar, an expert on Iran’s security services who teaches at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. “But his appointment could jeopardize Khamenei’s legacy by bringing back the monarchy.”

Experts say that Mojtaba Khamenei’s power may be threatened once his father passes away, and that he may fare better if he remains in the shadows. Before Khomeini’s death in 1989, his son Ahmad, who was his chief of staff and more powerful than Mojtaba Khamenei is today, ran the country’s affairs alongside Ali Khamenei and then-president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, but fell out with them after his father’s passing. Ahmad Khomeini died in 1995, at 49, of reported cardiac arrest.

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Vaccine billionaire hits out at end of UK ‘non-dom’ tax breaks

Serum Institute chief Adar Poonawalla says rule changes could make foreign investors ‘stay away’

Vaccine billionaire Adar Poonawalla has attacked the UK’s plans to restrict “non-dom” tax breaks for wealthy foreigners and criticised post-Brexit immigration restrictions, warning they could lead to an exodus of investors.

The chief executive of the Serum Institute of India, the world’s largest vaccine maker, said he had invested more than £250mn in the UK, including paying over £130mn for a Mayfair mansion in London’s most expensive home sale last year.

But he told the Financial Times in an interview that recent policies such as the government’s plans to abolish the “non-dom” tax regime, which allows UK residents with a permanent home overseas to avoid paying UK tax on their foreign income and gains, were making Britain a harder place to do business.

“At the top level, the policy should be such that it encourages large groups and individuals to come and invest and stay in the UK . . . Instead of doing that, you’re making rules which would make people stay away.”

The Conservative government announced in March that it would scrap the colonial-era concept of domicile in tax, stealing a policy from the opposition Labour party, which is polling strongly ahead of a general election expected later this year. It will be replaced from next year with a residence-based system and cut the time people can benefit from the tax perks.

Poonawalla said he doesn’t spend enough days in the UK to be affected but that his wife Natasha Poonawalla, executive director at Serum and a fashion influencer, risks losing the tax benefits once the changes come into effect. “Some people are willing to pay that cost like I am, but most others aren’t,” he said. “They can easily move out.”

Tax advisers say popular alternatives for UK non-doms include Italy, Greece, Spain, Switzerland and the UAE.

In Italy, foreign national residents can pay a fee of €100,000 to get a tax exemption on their foreign earnings for up to 15 years. Greece has similar arrangements.

Poonawalla added he had spoken informally to both the Conservatives and Labour, and that whoever comes to power after the election needs to address tax and immigration concerns for the UK to remain competitive.

“If you’re going to make it impossible, virtually, for someone to stay there because you’re putting so much either tax burden or these restrictions on movement of labour and human beings, how are you supporting the businesses?”

The Labour party has pledged to go further than the Conservatives by closing a carve-out the government had left open that allows non-doms to permanently shield foreign assets held in trusts, settled before April 2025, from UK inheritance tax.

Labour “have to, in my view, support businesses, livelihoods”, said Poonawalla. “Otherwise I don’t know what’s going to happen in the next five years.”

The Treasury said: “Whilst bringing in an extra £2.7bn a year for public services by 2028-29, our new simpler system will remain internationally competitive to attract the best talent to the UK.”

Poonawalla said that tougher immigration rules introduced after Brexit had made it harder for employers to find staff. “That’s not good for any business. It’s going to drive up your prices or shut down certain businesses,” he said.

“We need to find a way in the UK to definitely encourage, on visa systems or whatever, to bring in anyone who wants to come freely and wants to work,” he added. “They’re not taking UK jobs. It is only enhancing and helping businesses in the UK, which in turn will help the UK public get more jobs.”

Poonawalla and the Pune-based Serum Institute, which was founded in 1966 by his father Cyrus, shot to global prominence during the Covid-19 pandemic as manufacturer of AstraZeneca and Oxford university’s vaccine.

Serum has since committed £50mn for a new vaccine research facility at Oxford university and partnered with the university on a new malaria vaccine, shipping the first batch this week.

“We’ve got a lot of investment [in the UK] and we’re going to continue investing,” Poonawalla added. “I want the economy to be strong.”