Mojtaba Khamenei, son of the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, will replace his father as Iran's next supreme leader, members of the country's clerical body said in a statement published in state media.
A member of the council, Ayatollah Mohsen Heidari Alekasir, said in a video on Sunday that a candidate had been selected based on Khamenei's guidance that Iran's top leader should be "hated by the enemy."
"Even the Great Satan (U.S.) has mentioned his name," Heidari Alekasir said of the chosen successor, days after President Donald Trump said Mojtaba was an "unacceptable" choice for him.
The decision, also reported by Reuters and the New York Times on Sunday, comes as the U.S. military announced that another American service member died, bringing the number of U.S. troops killed in action so far in the war with Iran to seven.