Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s son emerges as leading choice to be his successor

The senior clerics responsible for selecting Iran’s next supreme leader met on Tuesday to deliberate, and the son of the slain former leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, emerged as the clear front-runner, according to three Iranian officials familiar with the deliberations.

The officials said that the clerics were considering announcing that the son, Mojtaba Khamenei, would be his father’s successor as early as Wednesday morning but that some had expressed reservations, fearing that it could expose him as a target for the United States and Israel. They spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive internal deliberations.

The clerics, known as the Assembly of Experts, held two virtual meetings — one in the morning and one in the evening, according to the officials. Israel struck a building in Qum, one of Shia Islam’s main seats of power, where the assembly was scheduled to meet and elect the new supreme leader, but the building was empty, according to the Fars News agency, which is affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.

Vali Nasr, an expert on Iran and Shia Islam at Johns Hopkins University, said that Mr. Khamenei would be a surprising choice — and a potentially telling one.

“He was slated to become the successor for a long time,” Mr. Nasr said, “but for the past two years, it seemed to have dropped off from the radar. If he is elected, it suggests it is a much more hard-line Revolutionary Guard side of the regime that is now in charge.”

Mojtaba Khamenei, 56, is an influential if reclusive figure who has operated in the shadows of the empire of his father, who was killed on Saturday in the U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran.

If Mojtaba Khamenei is chosen by Iran’s senior clerics, it may signal a victory for hard-liners, an analyst said.