Israel threatened to eliminate Iran’s next regime leader selected to replace Ayatollah Ali Khamenei if the successor continues his ideology — as the supreme leader’s son emerged as the favored frontrunner.
“Every leader appointed by the Iranian terror regime to continue and lead the plan to destroy Israel, to threaten the United States and the free world and the countries of the region, and to suppress the Iranian people—will be an unequivocal target for elimination,” Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz wrote on X on Wednesday.
“It does not matter what his name is or the place where he hides. The Prime Minister and I have instructed the IDF to prepare and act by all means to carry out the mission as an integral part of the objectives,” Katz said of Israel’s Operation “Lion Roar,” the military operation working alongside the US’s Operation Epic Fury.
Katz’s message comes after reports surfaced that Khamenei’s son, Mojtaba Khamenei, was being eyed to succeed his father by the powerful group of Iranian top mullahs.
Israeli media and Iranian opposition channels – reported Tuesday that Mojtaba had already been selected, though Iranian state media has not confirmed anything.
“We will continue to act with full force, together with our American partners, to crush the regime’s capabilities and create the conditions for the Iranian people to overthrow it and replace it,” Katz said.
Khamenei and roughly 40 senior Iranian officials including the Minister of Defense, Head of Intelligence, and the Supreme Leader’s Advisor for Security Affairs and Secretary of the Defense Council were killed in the early hours of the joint US-Israel operation on Saturday.
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The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps officials had all convened for a high-profile meeting inside Khamenei’s fortified compound in Tehran when Israeli fighter jets swooped in Saturday in the broad daylight attack, turning the building into rubble.
After Khamenei’s death, Iran was being ruled by a three-person transitional council consisting of two of the supreme leader’s top lieutenants and President Masoud Pezeshkian.
The council will rule over the Middle Eastern nation until the 88-member Assembly of Experts elects the new leader.
The younger Khamenei was initially believed to have been killed in the strike but reports of his name being passed around to succeed his father indicate he is alive.
Motjaba — the ayatollah’s second-oldest son — has been known for his staunch adherence to his father’s hardline conservatism and has close ties to Iran’s notoriously brutal Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps military body, according to CNN.
He never held an official position under his dad’s regime but was sanctioned by the US in 2019.
