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His son, Mojtaba, attended Alavi High School, a private religious school with a rigorous course load. (The school is located on Iran Street in central Tehran, where the author grew up.) Many of Iran’s present leaders are graduates of this high school.

His first teachers were his own father and Ayatollah Sayyed Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, the current judiciary chief. Mojtaba was not a cleric yet. In 1999, he moved to Qom to study to join the ranks of clerics. He was taught there by conservative and ultraconservative clerics such as Mesbah Yazdi; Ayatollah Lotfollah Safi Golpayegani, the first Secretary-General of the Guardian Council in the 1980s; and Ayatollah Sayyed Mohsen Kharrazi, the father of former foreign minister Kamal Kharrazi. (Kharrazi’s real name is Sayyed Mohsen Agha Mir Mohammad Ali and his daughter is married to Mojtaba’s younger brother, Mohsen, a junior cleric.)

Mojtaba Khamenei is also very close to Ayatollah Abolghasem Khazali,

One link is a mysterious figure not known to most Iranians. His name is Ayatollah Aziz Khoshvaght, who is a great supporter of Mojtaba Khamenei. Ayatollah Khamenei’s third child, Mostafa (Mojtaba’s older brother), is married to Khoshvaght’s daughter.

Khoshvaght is the prayer leader of a large mosque in northern Tehran, and a radical hardliner. Saeed Emami, the notorious figure who was responsible for the infamous Chain Murders in the fall of 1998, which resulted in the murder of six Iranian dissidents (and the murder of close to 70 other dissidents from 1988-1998), was a follower of Khoshvaght.

Khoshvaght is also close to and influential in the affairs of Ansar-e Hezbollah,

Mojtaba Khamenei and the paramilitary groups is Brigadier General Sayyed Mohammad Hejazi,

The third link between Mojtaba Khamenei and the paramilitary groups is Hassan Taeb, the current commander of the Basij. A hardliner and cleric, he is also linked with Mesbah Yazdi and his followers.

Other relatively young radicals and disciples of Mesbah Yazdi include Mohsen Gharavian and Ghassem Ravanbakhsh. The former always attempts to present a moderate and reasonable image of Mesbah Yazdi and his thinking, whereas the latter who is the editor-in-chief of Partow Sokhan, the weekly published by Mesbah Yazdi, is virulently opposed to the reformist-democratic movement.

However, many clerics in Qom dispute Mojataba Khamenei’s religious credentials.

There have been persistent rumors that Brigadier General Ali Fazli, who lost his left eye in the Iran-Iraq war, the commander of the IRGC forces in the Tehran province, has been opposed to the harsh crackdown on the protesters and demonstrators (reportedly ordered by Mojtaba Khamenei). Both he and Major General Mohammad Ali (Aziz) Jafari, the top commender of the IRGC, are said to be opposed to Mojtaba Khamenei’s meddling and power plays.

Mojtaba Khamenei is married to a daughter of Gholam-Ali Haddad Adel, a university professor and former conservative Speaker of the Majles. After he was elected the Speaker of the 8th Majles in 2004, Haddad Adel once said, “We were told [by Ayatollah Khamenei] to be here [in the Majles to control it for the Ayatollah],” for which he was widely mocked by the reformists. But this statement indicated how the Ayatollah was putting his loyalists everywhere. Ayatollah Khamenei’s oldest daughter is married to Hojatoleslam Mohammad Mohammadi Golpayegani, his chief of staff.