WASHINGTON -- The transition of power in the Islamic republic has long been whispered about in the corridors of Tehran, but the ascension of Mojtaba Khamenei in March as the country's third supreme leader -- following the death of his father, Ali Khamenei, in an air strike -- has fundamentally altered the nature of the Iranian state.
For years, Mojtaba was the ultimate “known unknown” -- a shadowy power broker who managed the intersection of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) and the supreme leader’s vast financial architecture.
Today, long-standing claims of clerical modesty are being eclipsed by evidence of vast wealth. Recent findings from Bloomberg and US Treasury data place Mojtaba Khamenei at the center of a sophisticated offshore property portfolio worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
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Iran's Conservative Camp Split Over US Talks To End WarAfter being announced as the country's new supreme leader on March 8, Mojtaba Khamenei has not been seen in public, nor has he made any public statements in his own voice, giving rise to speculation he too may have died or been seriously injured in US and Israeli attacks.
As Iran grapples with wartime devastation and hyperinflation, the exposure of this “succession wealth” raises a crucial question for the regime’s legitimacy: Has the Islamic republic officially transitioned from a revolutionary theocracy into a hereditary, security-backed kleptocracy?
RFE/RL spoke with Max Meizlish, a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) and a former official at the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), to dissect the mechanics of this "mafia state" and why Western sanctions have, thus far, failed to dismantle it.
Architecture Of Piracy: "Bonyads" And Shadow Banks
RFE/RL: Who is Mojtaba Khamenei really, where is his wealth coming from, and does it point to a systemic kleptocracy?
Max Meizlish: Mojtaba Khamenei is the son of the former supreme leader of Iran. He is the beneficiary of an entire system of kleptocratic wealth and essentially piracy from the people of Iran.
The IRGC and the leadership of the regime have spent years developing commercial enterprises, stealing assets from the state and from the people, and then centralizing that power within a small group of regime insiders.
Mojtaba essentially has come to benefit from that financially and also from a position of influence within the country.
RFE/RL: That leads directly into the financial machinery behind it. What role do the "Bonyads" play in his network?
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US Sanctions Expert: Iran's Supreme Leader Benefits From 'Kleptocratic Wealth'
Meizlish: The bonyads are essentially quasi-official charitable organizations -- or so they say. But the idea, really, is that these are vehicles for money to come within the control of the IRGC and regime insiders. They are used as vehicles to raise funds to ultimately push money out to support some of the regime's terrorist networks: Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and elsewhere around the world.
Over the years, the United States has taken action against these entities. Notably, even with the JCPOA [Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action] from years past, around 2015 when we rolled back a lot of sanctions on Iran related to the nuclear program, these entities also had their sanctions removed, so they had to be later reimposed.
This is just a fascinating development with respect to economic sanctions -- how these elements that really relate to kleptocracy and corruption got rolled up into a deal that related to the regime's nuclear program and had to be reimposed again.
In Tehran, a man walks past a banner with pictures of Iran's slain Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (right) and his son and successor Mojtaba Khamenei.
RFE/RL: Just so we have a clear understanding of how this works beyond the domestic structure: How are the assets moving through global markets?
Meizlish: Yeah, it's interesting. You know, we probably think that it's all just opaque backroom deals. But really, one of the pieces that I think is relevant for folks to see is this analysis from the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) from the Treasury Department. This document was from October 2025, and it assessed the extent to which there's shadow banking activity in Western capitals.
A lot of money is moving through the United States because of correspondent banking relationships that Iran and its networks of evasion maintain with US banks. In 2024 alone, there were an estimated $9 billion of financial flows moving through US correspondent banks.
A lot of that supports the Iranian oil sector, petrochemical sector, and heavy industries -- all moving their funds through opaque shell companies and these networks of evasion, but moving them through Western financial institutions because, frankly, that's where the capital actually is.
RFE/RL: More concretely -- Dubai, London, Europe: Where is the money actually going?
Meizlish: There are significant amounts of money that go into China, specifically Hong Kong. The UAE is a major destination for Iranian financial flows. Singapore has also emerged, which is pretty notable with respect to the oil economy.
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Iran Thinks It's Winning. That View Is Guiding Its War And Diplomacy.Malaysia and Oman are also emerging sectors. So, really, anywhere there's connectivity to the global financial system -- where there's a natural pathway for the Iranian regime to plant its financial networks -- it will go. Really, the UAE, Singapore, and Hong Kong are among the most prolific and important to the regime.
Loyalty For Sale: IRGC And The "Mafia State"
RFE/RL: If his wealth is a foundation, then influence is the outcome. How deep are his ties to Iran's security elite?
Meizlish: Well, right now he's the supreme leader, supposedly, right? We don't really have much evidence to show that he's actually alive and well and being able to influence decision-making, but what we do know is that he is part of the faction of more regime insiders -- the hard-line faction of the government.
When we talk about influence in the country, it's the IRGC that has a lot of influence over the financial institutions, heavy industry, and the oil sector. All these levers of influence and financial power, Mojtaba is also tied into.
RFE/RL: This raises a critical mechanism of control: loyalty for sale. Is wealth distribution driving IRGC allegiance here?
Meizlish: I think you can think of this as a function of ordinary kleptocracy and oligarchy with patronage networks where there are preferential contracts for regime insiders.
The important thing is to see that for all of these individuals and the entities that relate to them, if the United States and Western powers can actually move to cut off the flows to those companies, then we're actually degrading the ability for the regime to survive. Just like any kleptocracy and oligarchy, it all relies on the financial flows moving forward to support those networks.
RFE/RL: As this system expands, a paradox emerges. Why hasn’t the network been crippled despite years of sanctions?
Meizlish: This is one of those fascinating questions. On the one hand, we have some of the sanctions being unwound from years past during the period of the JCPOA; some of those had to be reimposed years later. There was a gap there where people could proliferate those illicit financial flows. But really, I think this comes down to two points: one is political will, and the other is resourcing.
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Azeem Ibrahim: Iran Conflict Will Be Decided By Who Can 'Endure The Most'It’s interesting -- when we are on a war footing right now against Iran, in the last two months of being in a war, we've seen only a couple of designations come through from the Treasury Department, and some of them, for the most part, have really been "standard issue."
They're significant -- going after a Chinese "teapot" refinery -- but when you think about it, we already saw four Chinese teapots being sanctioned during the second term of the Trump administration. (NOTE: A "teapot" refers to a small, independent, privately owned oil refinery in China.) We saw a package that was going after weapons proliferation and smuggling networks benefiting the regime. That's an action very similar to what we saw before being in a war.
The most notable escalation here is just the other day, on April 28, there was a designation that came through identifying several dozen companies that essentially run thousands of shadow firms in the banking system -- in China and some in the UK, interestingly -- and that also relates to Mojtaba's assets.
We see an escalation now where the most identifiable elements related to the banking infrastructure are being surfaced publicly for the first time. These "Rahbar" companies, as they're called, manage the assets of thousands of shadow entities and shell companies.
That’s a signal to financial institutions: "We are making this as transparent as possible to you; if you have assets on your books benefiting these entities and the thousands of firms beneath them and you don't block them, then we're going to come after you as the bank."
To your question -- why haven’t we crippled these networks? Well, it's because we haven't chosen to do it yet. This is a function of political will. Do we really want to wait until we're on a war footing in the midst of battle to take aggressive action? The smarter thing would have been to do it years ago. From a resourcing perspective, someone from the Department of Defense just said the war has cost about $25 billion -- and I’ve seen estimates suggesting that could be on the low end.
That’s just in two months. In contrast, over the last 10 years, our financial intelligence apparatus (OFAC and FinCEN) has only been funded to about $3.3 billion total. We are spending $25 billion in two months on a kinetic war while underfunding the economic statecraft meant to prevent it.
RFE/RL: What tools are Western governments failing to use beyond what you’ve mentioned?
Meizlish: Beyond what we can do domestically, the United States is in a position where it can lead and direct change among partner countries. For instance, the UAE is currently breaking away from OPEC -- that’s a big deal. It comes at a time when there's a discussion over a currency swap arrangement.
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America's Arab Allies Face Stark Choice In Iran WarPerhaps this is a way for the US to pull the UAE further into the orbit of the West as a financial hub, encouraging more aggressive anti-money-laundering compliance and sharing financial intelligence to block regime assets. Beyond that, we could look to partner countries that haven’t designated the IRGC yet.
Many countries don’t even have the legal framework to sanction an entity like the IRGC. We should help them develop those capabilities. Too often, the US looks to other countries to do what we should be doing ourselves. It comes down to political will and whether we are staffing the offices we’re asking to do these jobs.
RFE/RL: Ultimately, one question lingers: What is the one “known unknown” about Mojtaba Khamenei’s financial network that we should be watching?
Meizlish: The "known unknown" is the actual scale of the impact on the global economy if the US took major action against the foreign financial institutions -- the banks in China, Hong Kong, and the UAE -- that actually bank the regime. These are major hubs for global finance. What we don't know is the exact scale of that disturbance.
However, looking at our history -- using tools against MBaer Bank in Switzerland or Mexican firms tied to cartels -- we see that it pushes regulators in those jurisdictions to step up and take ownership of the problems they've been deficient in addressing. I would argue that whatever the cost will be, it's going to be worth it in the long term so that we can actually combat this kleptocracy once and for all.