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Khamenei's son: Iran experts say he plays key role in protest crackdown: Experts say he's key in crackdown, may be successor (Jeffrey Fleishman, June 25, 2009, Chicago Tribune)

And at the center, or at least very close to it, is Mojtaba Khamenei, an ultraconservative cleric who, analysts say, is being positioned to succeed his father.

The younger Khamenei, who is believed to be in his 40s or early 50s, has emerged as a force in a bureaucracy gradually created by his father to consolidate the supreme leader's power over the nation's military, intelligence operations and foreign policy. That accumulation of control was used to outflank reformists such as Hashemi Rafsanjani and Hossein Ali Montazeri, revered figures of the Islamic Revolution who years ago had questioned the senior Khamenei's qualifications as supreme leader.

The violence that has erupted over the last week -- state media have reported that 10 to 19 people have died -- were in part the result of a crackdown by forces close to Mojtaba Khamenei, who backs Ahmadinejad and shares his Islamic fervor.

"This coup taking place is a political liquidation against the old guard by reckless people like Motjaba and Ahmadinejad," said Mehdi Khalaji, an expert on Iran with The Washington Institute for Near East Policy. "But I don't think they will win. Power that relies only on the military and doesn't care about social or religious institutions cannot last long."

Mojtaba Khamenei is a secretive man who doesn't want to "be on people's tongues," said Mohsen Sazegara, an Iranian journalist and former government official. "Nobody knows much about him."

Khalaji said the supreme leader immersed himself in literature, novels and music, was friends with intellectuals and spent time in jail with Marxists when he was younger, but the son "grew up in a very different atmosphere, a postrevolutionary generation."

Analysts say Mojtaba Khamenei lacks the religious and political stature to overcome the opposition he would face in the Assembly of Experts, the body charged with selecting the supreme leader. His father, 69, is believed to have influence over about half of the assembly's 86 seats, but the board is headed by Rafsanjani and includes other reformists who would likely block an attempt for the younger Khamenei to succeed his father.

"Neither Ayatollah Ali Khamenei nor Ahmadinejad are popular in Qom," Ali Ansari, the head of Iranian studies at St. Andrews University in Scotland, wrote in The Observer, referring to the Shiite holy city where Iran's top clerics teach. "The clerics may bide their time, but their intervention, which may come sooner rather than later -- especially if violence spreads -- could be decisive."