Ahmad Khatami

Ahmad Khatami is a hardline Shia cleric and member of the Guardian Council and the Assembly of Experts. He shares a surname with reformist President Mohammad Khatami but is entirely unrelated — a fact that gave him national prominence in 1997. He was appointed substitute Friday Prayer Imam of Tehran in 2005 by Ali Khamenei, becoming the youngest person to hold that position. During the 2009 Green Movement protests he declared the protesters to be engaging in mohareb (war against God), a capital offence, and called on the judiciary to execute opposition leaders Mir-Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi as 'leaders of sedition'. Appointed to the Guardian Council by Ali Khamenei in 2020 to replace Mohammad Yazdi. He was mentioned as a candidate for Supreme Leader succession but reportedly opposed Mojtaba Khamenei's elevation in the Assembly of Experts.