Mojtaba Khamenei attended the funeral ceremony of Vahid Haghanian's brother

Back in the 1990s, Asghar Hejazi was widely understood to be Ayatollah Khamenei's chief liaison with political activists. From the 2000s onward this became the understood role of Vahid Haghanian. Not much is known about the latter’s background, and he and other officials in the office of the Supreme Leader generally contrive to keep such things a secret. In 2019 he was sanctioned by the US Treasury together with eight other members of the Supreme Leader's office. The Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) wrote: "Vahid Haghanian... has been referred to as the Supreme Leader’s right hand.