This has been Iran’s tragedy for decades, ever since the Islamic Republic was established in 1979: a political, military and security elite that wages war against the West and Israel, burning through the country’s resources—tens of billions of dollars—on a nuclear weapons programme that will never come to fruition (Washington and Tel Aviv will see to that). Those weapons will never materialise because the mullahs did not operate with the discretion shown by Pakistan and India. When you proclaim morning, noon and night that the first mission of a hypothetical atomic arsenal would be to obliterate the Hebrew state, it should come as no surprise that the other side moves to pre-empt—especially when dealing with a hardliner like Benjamin Netanyahu.
The immediate consequence of this obsession with the nuclear bomb has been a barrage of international sanctions (American and European), strikes that suffocate an economy that nevertheless has the means to develop, and a stranglehold that impoverishes the population and shuts down the horizons of the country’s youth. And when young people push back, rage and protest, the mullahs open fire. They know only one thing: to kill, to crush—tens of thousands the last time, it is said. But those who do the killing do not go hungry; they gorge themselves on privileges and special treatment.
Last month, we discussed the plans attributed to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, as reported by the British newspaper The Times. It was said that the Supreme Leader was packing his bags to flee to Moscow if President Donald Trump decided to go beyond threats of armed intervention. Apparently, Rouhollah Khomeini’s successor has chosen to die a martyr at home if things turn bad—unless he waits until the final moment to run to Vladimir Putin…
What concerns us now, however, is the fortune amassed by his clan. Bloomberg has been digging into the dealings of Ali Khamenei’s son. “Behind the luxurious façades of the homes on Bishops Avenue [an affluent London neighbourhood] lies a [financial and property] network stretching from Tehran to Dubai and Frankfurt. The ultimate ownership traces, through a multitude of shell companies, to one of the most powerful men in the Middle East: Mojtaba Khamenei, the second son of Iran’s supreme leader,” the US outlet writes in an investigation into the assets of the man presented as his father’s potential successor.
At 56, this cleric (such credentials are essential to aspire to anything significant in Iran) is said to control a vast financial empire, “spanning maritime transport in the Persian Gulf to Swiss bank accounts, via luxury British real estate,” according to sources close to the file and a “major Western intelligence service” that briefed the outlet.
The assets identified include properties in a multitude of London’s most exclusive districts, a villa in an area dubbed “Dubai’s Beverly Hills,” and luxury hotels in Europe—Frankfurt (Germany), Mallorca (Spain), and elsewhere—according to the cited sources. “This network of companies enabled funds—estimated at several billion dollars—to be channelled into Western markets, despite US sanctions imposed in 2019,” Bloomberg reports.
The purchases, some of which date back to 2011, are not in Mojtaba Khamenei’s name—well before the sanctions regime, Bloomberg notes. Most investments are allegedly made through a front man: an Iranian businessman, Ali Ansari, a member of the Khamenei clan sanctioned by the United Kingdom since October 2025, according to documents reviewed by the outlet.
As for the money that financed these operations, it “comes mainly from sales of Iranian oil [also subject to sanctions]” and transited—according to the same sources—“through bank accounts in the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Liechtenstein and the United Arab Emirates.”
The article goes further still, into the depths of the financial empire built by Iran’s ruling elite—starting with the Supreme Leader himself—who is said to oversee one of the country’s most lucrative organisations, known as the “Execution of Imam Khomeini’s Order.” Built largely on the seizure of thousands of properties after the Islamic Revolution, the structure controls assets worth several billion dollars across the country, according to Bloomberg. It is currently “one of the largest public conglomerates in the Middle East.” No less.
Unsurprisingly, these revelations sit uneasily with the stark façade of “piety and austerity promoted by state media and the authorities” around the Ayatollah and his circle, Bloomberg concludes. But above all, the exposé reinforces one idea: no one—apart from the direct beneficiaries of this shadowy system—will mourn the disappearance of those who have been draining Iranians since 1979.
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