Mar. 8, 2026, 5:24 PM EDT

Iran’s regime has named Mojtaba Khamenei the Islamic Republic’s supreme leader, succeeding his father, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed in an airstrike at the start of the ongoing Middle East war.

Several of Mojtaba Khamenei’s other family members were also killed in the initial strikes, including his wife, Zahra Adel, his mother, Mansoureh Khojasteh Bagherzadeh, and his son, according to Iranian state media.

The ascension of Khamenei to his father’s seat of nearly absolute power suggests a determination by regime hard-liners to dig in against internal and external pressure for reform, even as U.S. and Israeli bombs continue to fall.

It also creates the awkward appearance of a ruling family leading an Islamic Republic that supplanted the monarchy of the shahs after the Iranian Revolution of 1979.

But Trump did not rule out accepting a new Iranian leader with ties to the old regime.

Khamenei, the late ayatollah’s second son, becomes just the third person to hold the title of supreme leader, after his father and Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the republic.

Like his father when he took power in 1989, Khamenei, 56, is not an ayatollah but a mid-level Shia cleric. The elder Khamenei had the law changed to make himself an ayatollah essentially overnight – a source of tension that never quite went away during his brutal reign of nearly 37 years.

Until now, Khamenei has been considered a quietly powerful figure who has played a behind-the-scenes role in the regime. He has reportedly amassed a vast real estate portfolio through shell companies with several properties in Dubai, Frankfurt, Mallorca and on London’s “Billionaire’s Row” worth more than $100 million combined, according to a Bloomberg investigation.

In addition to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard, his new role also means he is the de-facto leader of the so-called Axis of Resistance, a collection of paramilitary groups within the region united against the U.S., Israel and Saudi Arabia, including Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen and Hamas in Gaza, as well as smaller groups in Iraq.

Regardless of who the leader would have been, they have a target on their back as U.S. and Israeli officials have vowed to assassinate them. Several high-ranking Iranian officialsincluding Defense Minister Amir Nasirzadeh and Revolutionary Guards commander Mohammad Pakpour, have already been killed.

The new leader was chosen by Iran’s Assembly of Experts, the governmental body comprised of 88 clerics established at the beginning of the revolution. The group’s building in Qom, a city south of capital Tehran, was hit in an airstrike on March 3.

In an interview with MS NOW on March 4, Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Majid Takht-Ravanchi did not confirm if Mojtaba would succeed his father, but said that “a new body has been established, comprised of three people, so they will be in charge until the new leader is elected,” adding that the group was “working to prepare the ground for the election of the new leader.”

Cabrera questioned Takht-Ravanchi’s definition of an “election,” asking, “Will the people of Iran have any say on who leads this country next? Or is that predetermined?”

“The people have already chosen that body who is going to elect the supreme leader,” Takht-Ravanchi said, calling the process “very transparent” and “democratic.”

Trump had repeatedly and publicly urged Iran to accept his terms for a nuclear weapons agreementamid fragile negotiations mediated by Omani diplomats, and threatened an attack if it did not. More than 1,000 people have been killed in Iran since the war began, according to U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA). Iran has struck several U.S. military bases and civilian sites throughout the Middle East in retaliation, with at least six U.S. service members killed and numerous other deaths around the region from Iran’s retaliatory drone and missile strikes.

Erum Salam is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW, with a focus on how global events and foreign policy shape U.S. politics. She previously was a breaking news reporter for The Guardian.

Mar. 8, 2026, 2:17 PM EDT

Press freedom organizations are celebrating the court decision invalidating Kari Lake’s tenure at Voice of America and nullifying the mass layoffs she ordered last year.

Reporters without Borders’ Executive Director Clayton Weimers, said the Saturday evening ruling “confirms what we knew when we first filed this lawsuit almost one year ago: that Kari Lake and the Trump administration acted unlawfully in gutting Voice of America (VOA). There is still more to unpack in this decision and work to be done to ensure VOA’s journalists get back to work. Beyond the immediate implications of the decision, this case is proof that fighting for press freedom matters.”

Lake, a former local news anchor and failed gubernatorial and Senate candidate, had tried to dismantle Voice of America, the U.S. government-funded international broadcaster created during World War II to provide news to a global audience, particularly to countries with little to no press freedom. Lake left her position as CEO on Nov. 19.

U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth found that Lake was ineligible to serve as acting CEO of the United States Agency for Global Media, Voice of America’s parent company, when she was appointed to the position in July without Senate approval.

“The Court finds that these expansive delegations were an unlawful effort to transform Lake into the CEO of U.S. Agency for Global Media in all but name,” Lamberth wrote, adding that “Lake satisfies the requirements of neither the statute nor the Constitution.”

Lake called the decision “bogus” and vowed to appeal it.

Lee Saunders, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, the country’s largest trade union for public sector employees, called the ruling “a major victory for the federal workers who Kari Lake and this administration have been attempting to illegally fire for the last year.”

“Voice of America employees are dedicated public servants who provide hope for freedom to those living under oppressive governments around the world,” Saunders said. “Yet time and again, this administration has attempted to strip these proud AFSCME members of their collective bargaining freedoms and their jobs.”

Erum Salam is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW, with a focus on how global events and foreign policy shape U.S. politics. She previously was a breaking news reporter for The Guardian.