A week after the U.S. and Israel pounded Iran with airstrikes and assassinated its supreme leader Ali Khamenei, the regime named his second son, Mojtaba Khamenei, as the Iranian head of state.

Assembly of Experts, a group comprising 88 Shiite scholars of the Iranian regime, chose Mr Khamenei as his father’s successor to mount a ferocious fight against U.S. President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyah.

But who really is Mr Khamenei and has he the spunk to withstand the combined military pressure of U.S. and Israeli forces, and win the war?

Mr Khamenei, 56, was born on September 8, 1969 in Mashad as the second son of the late Iranian leader. His name, Mojtaba, means “chosen” and he was only 10 years old when his father joined the first Ayatollah, Ruhollah Khomeini, in the uprising that toppled Iran’s ruling Shah and ushered in the Islamic Revolution.

He has an elder brother Mostafa Khamenei and two younger siblings, Masoud Khamenei and Meysam Khamenei.

Mr Khamenei completed elementary school in Sardasht and Mahabad. His secondary education at the Alavi School in Tehran after which he proceeded to the Qom seminary learning from popular Islamic clerics including his father, Mohammad‑Taghi Mesbah‑Yazdi and Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi.

At 17, he joined the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) fighting in the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s and has stealthily built a reputation as a hardline conservative just like his father. He was a teenage fighter serving in the Habib Ibn Mazaher Battalion of the 27th Mohammed Rasulullah Division.

In 2004, he married Zahra, the daughter of a prominent politician who later emerged speaker of the Iranian parliament, Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel. They have three children together but his teenage son was killed in the February 28 U.S.-Israeli airstrikes.

He taught at the Qom seminaries for more than 15 years focusing on dars-e kharej, the highest level of Islamic education in Shia seminaries. Local media said he attained the position of an ayatollah in 2022 having excelled in critical assessments of Islamic jurisprudence.

Although little is known of Mr Khamenei, who has deliberately maintained a low profile to the extent of being described as a recluse, several reports portrayed him as the underlying force who helped sustain his father’s iron-clad grip in Iran. Until his appointment in March 8, Mr Khamenei has never held any public office.

Reports from UK Sky News and World Street Journal said Mr Khamenei amassed a fortune mostly in real estate across several countries including properties in London, Dubai and Vienna.

Since his appointment, Mr Khamenei has remained out of public view. On Thursday, he issued his first statement as supreme leader from an undisclosed location, delivering a fiery message in which he denounced the U.S. and Israel while vowing to keep the Strait of Hormuz closed.

The narrow waterway is one of the world’s most critical oil transit routes, handling one fifth of the global crude supply.

Iran’s closure of the Strait has so far hurt the global oil shipments which in turn rattled the world economy as oil prices surged past $100 per barrel. In Nigeria, fuel that previously sold at N890 per litre before the war jumped to N1200 within a week of the conflict. Transportation fares have risen sharply while flight tickets have also increased.

No fewer than 10 tankers which attempted to pass through the Strait of Hormuz got struck by Iranian missiles as Tehran maintains a chokehold of the narrow oil passage.

But Mr Khamenei’s continued absence from the public domain has fuelled speculations from Mr Trump and U.S. war chief Pete Hegseth who said the new Iranian leader was likely “disfigured” during the airstrikes that killed six of his family members.

So far, Mr Khamenei lost his father, mother, and teenage son, Mohammed Bagher. His sister, brother-in-law and their 14-month-old baby also perished in the attack, as confirmed by Iran’s ambassador to Cyprus, Alireza Salarian, in an interview with UK Guardian.

There have also been conflicting reports about the fate of his wife, Zahra Haddad-Adel. She was initially reported dead on February 28 but new reports on Friday suggest she might still be alive.

That the new Iranian leader resorted to issuing a statement and not deliver a televised address, a common practice in his father’s 37-year rule, validated claims that he might be bedridden from injuries sustained during the airstrikes that the U.S. codenamed “Operation Epic Fury” but which Iran dismissed as “Operation Epic Mistake.”

Iran’s ambassador to Cyprus told UK Guardian that Mr Khamenei injured his limbs during the bombardment.

“He was also there and he was injured in that bombardment but I haven’t seen that reflected in the foreign news,” Mr Salarian said. “I have heard that he was injured in his legs and hand and arm … I think he is in the hospital because he is injured.”

The ambassador further said Mr Khamenei was being kept in a secure location to prevent further assassination attempts by the U.S. and Israeli forces. On Friday, Mr Trump’s administration promised a $10 million reward for anyone with useful information about Iran’s new supreme leader and other top regime officials.

The offer suggests that even the U.S. intelligence agencies seem to lack actionable information to pinpoint Mr Khamenei’s location and predict his movement or routine.