A headline in All Israel News says, "Experts warn: Iran's new leader is 'obsessed' with end times, believes himself to be prophesied figure paving way for the Mahdi."
Mojtaba Khamenei is the son of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the former supreme leader of Iran. He was appointed as the new supreme leader on March 8 following his father’s death on the first day of combined U.S.-Israel strikes against Iran. His appointment was a disappointment for the Trump administration.
Interviews with Jabar Rejabi, a former Iranian operative who studied with Mojtaba in Shia seminaries, reveals that the new leader is even worse than his father, calling him a “hardline Shia extremist” and “apocalypse-obsessed.”
Gino Geraci is the founding pastor of Calvary South Denver and was a guest on AFR's “Jenna Ellis in the Morning this week.
"The article gets it exactly right: that this new supreme leader is obsessed with the end times and sees himself as a kind of prophetic fulfillment," states Geraci.
Ali Siadatan, an Iran-born Christian and founder of Think Again Productions, says it’s not surprising Khamenei believes this since Iran is a theocracy. A constitutional theocracy is a form of government in which religious leaders and religious law guide a country within the bounds of a written constitution.
As Siadatan puts it, “the mosque is the state, the Qur’an provides constitutional logic, and eschatology shapes foreign policy.”
Geraci agrees and reveals that most of the Western world has misunderstood the country's identity and mission as a state.
"What it means is that their whole government is centered around a theological mission, and that is to bring about the Mahdi. Just like Christians believe that Jesus is going to return, Shia Muslims believe that the Mahdi, the rightly guided person, is going to come back,” explains Geraci.
Geraci informs that this belief is what fuels their actions. He says the way to bring about a just kingdom and final judgement in their view is to live by sowing chaos through global conflict.
"Their clerical leadership believes that it is incumbent upon them to act and behave in such a way that they can fulfill that mission. This Khamenei junior, they believe that he might be the prophetic fulfillment of three individuals who are going to precede the coming of the Mahdi," states Geraci.
Shia eschatology says that the return of Mahdi will be herald by three prophesied figures: the Yamani, the Sufyani and the Khorasani. It is believed that these figures are regionally based in connection with their names.
Mojtaba believes himself to be the Khorasani, and he was born in a holy city of Shia Islam in a region of east Iran known a Khorasan.
