Who is the acting president of Iran, Mohammad Mokhber?

(REUTERS): Mohammad Mokhber, 68, the first vice president of Iran and the interim head of the judiciary after Ebrahim Raisi’s death in a helicopter crash, are members of a three-person council that will arrange a new presidential election within 50 days of the president’s passing.

The other two members of the council are the speaker of parliament and the head of the judiciary.

Mokhber, who was born on September 1, 1955, is regarded as being close to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who has the final say in all affairs of state, much like Raisi.

When Raisi won the presidency in 2021, Mokhber was elected as the first vice president.

Reuters was informed at the time by sources that Mokhber was a member of an Iranian delegation that travelled to Moscow in October with the intention of giving Russia’s military additional drones and surface-to-surface missiles.

Two senior Revolutionary Guards of Iran officials and a representative from the Supreme National Security Council were also on the team.

Previously, Mokhber oversaw Setad, an investment fund connected to the supreme commander.

A list of people and organisations that the European Union sanctioned in 2010 for their alleged involvement in “nuclear or ballistic missile activities” included Mokhber.

It took two years for it to take him off the list.

Setad and the 37 companies it supervised were added to the list of sanctioned entities by the U.S. Treasury Department in 2013.

Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the predecessor of Khamenei, issued an edict establishing Setad, whose full name is Setad Ejraiye Farmane Hazrate Emam, or the Headquarters for Executing the edict of the Imam.

After the tumultuous years following the Islamic Revolution in 1979, it directed assistants to maintain and sell assets that were allegedly abandoned, allocating the majority of the earnings to charitable causes.