Sayyid Mojtaba Hosseini Khamenei is an Iranian Shia cleric and son of Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of Iran. He served in the Iran–Iraq War from 1987 to 1988. He also reportedly took control of the Basij militia that was used to suppress the protests over the 2009 election. Mojtaba Khamenei was born to a clerical family in Mashhad, Iran, an important religious centre for the Twelver Shiʿah, at a time of pronounced socioeconomic upheaval among the city’s clerical elite. The reform programs of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, most notably the land reforms of the 1960s and the subsequent White Revolution, disenfranchised many clerical families, especially those around the shrine complex of the eighth Twelver imam, ʿAlī al-Riḍā. Mojtaba Khamenei’s father, Ali Khamenei, was among the young activists who supported efforts to overthrow the shah in the 1970s (see Iranian Revolution) and became an influential figure in the Islamic Republic when it was established in 1979.
