Mojtaba Khamenei, a son of Iran’s late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, long has been considered a contender to the post of the country’s next paramount ruler even before his father's death. He has never been elected nor appointed to a government position. Khamenei has been a secretive figure within the Islamic Republic. He has not been seen publicly since Saturday. That is when an Israeli airstrike targeting the supreme leader’s offices killed his 86-year-old father and sparked the war raging across the Middle East. That attack also killed the younger Khamenei’s wife, Zahra Haddad Adel, who came from a family long associated with the country’s theocracy.
