Experts warn that Mojtaba Khamenei, Iran’s newly selected leader, may be more radical than his father, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the former supreme leader who was killed during the Feb. 28 U.S. and Israeli airstrikes on Tehran. And Christian aid groups are concerned for the future welfare of Christians in the nation.
Mojtaba Khamenei, 56, was selected on March 8 by Iran’s 88-member Assembly of Experts. Long-rumored to be a key influence behind the scenes in Iran’s government and security forces, Khamenei is a mid-ranking cleric who was trained in Shiite seminaries in Qom, Iran.
Janer Rajabi, an Iranian exile and former Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) operative who claims to have studied with Khamenei, warned in a recent interview with The Atlantic that Khamenei is an “apocalypse-obsessed” man who is “uniquely dangerous” and “more dangerous than 50 nuclear bombs.”
“He thinks there are milestones on the path to the end of the world and he himself will have a special part in hastening humanity down that path,” Rajabi said.
Rajabi also told ArabCast news that Khamenei “puts a lot of weight on visions and dreams and these things. He sees them and says, ‘I saw them, and they say that you are al-Sayyid al-Khorasani’ … I mean, once he told me, ‘Adam, peace be upon him, came to him [in a dream and told me this].’”
According to Rajabi, the newly selected leader believes he is a prophesied figure of the Khorasani that would help fulfill the Mahdi’s return. The Mahdi—sometimes called the 12th Imam—is an Islamic messianic figure who appears before the end times, based on Shia eschatology. Mahdi’s return, Shia Muslims believe, is to be announced by three figures, including the Khorasani, a leader from the historical region of Khorasan, which contains parts of Iran, Afghanistan, and Central Asia.