Khamenei's son has elite real estate in London right next to the Israeli embassy
According to information from Bloomberg, citing property documents, Mojtaba Khamenei — the son of Iran's deceased supreme leader and his possible successor — owns two luxurious apartments in the Kensington area of London, approximately 50 meters from the Israeli embassy.
Morteza Nikoubazl/NurPhoto via Getty Images
The total value of this property is estimated at approximately 50 million pounds sterling (more than 67 million dollars). The apartments are located on the sixth and seventh floors of an elite residential complex and include staff quarters.
The first apartment was acquired in 2014, and the second — two years later. Formally, the owner was an Iranian businessman, Ali Ansari, whom the media call a trusted person of the Khamenei family.
Later, UK authorities accused Ansari of financing the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and imposed restrictions on all transactions involving London properties registered in his name.
Experts interviewed by Bloomberg expressed concern that the apartments of a person named as the main candidate for Iran's supreme leader are located so close to the Israeli embassy. Roger Macmillan, former security director of the opposition television channel Iran International, suggested that these apartments could have been used as an observation point for embassy staff and visitors, allowing their movements to be tracked and conversations in open areas of the embassy to be potentially intercepted.
According to Bloomberg data, Mojtaba Khamenei's London real estate may not be limited to these two apartments. It is believed that he also controls another 11 properties in the prestigious Hampstead area in north London, known as "billionaires' row." Formally, he is not listed as their owner, but, according to some information, he manages this property through companies associated with him.
The total value of this property is estimated at approximately 200 million pounds sterling (about 270 million dollars). Some of these houses are empty or even in a dilapidated state.
Iranian authorities have already announced that the candidate for the country's supreme leader successor has been agreed upon but will be declared later. At the same time, media report an alleged split within Iran's ruling elite, where a long-standing conflict between conservatives and a more radical group of "hawks" was previously restrained by the authority of the deceased 86-year-old Ali Khamenei.
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