Mojtaba Khamenei, a son of Iran’s late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, long has been considered a contender to the post of the country’s next paramount ruler — even before his father's death though he’s never being elected nor appointed to a government position. Khamenei, long a secretive figure within the Islamic Republic, hasn’t been seen publicly since Saturday. That's when an Israeli airstrike targeting the supreme leader’s offices killed his 86-year-old father and sparked the current war raging across the Middle East. That attack also killed his wife, Zahra Haddad Adel, who came from a family long associated with the country’s theocracy.
