US bounty on Mojtaba Khamenei? Washington offers $10 million for intel on Iran's new Supreme Leader, IRGC chiefs
US State Department has placed a $10 million (over ₹83 crore) bounty on Iran's new Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei and senior IRGC officials under its Rewards for Justice programme, in Washington's boldest intelligence push against Tehran yet.
The United States has placed a $10 million (over ₹83 crore) bounty on Iran's new Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei and a clutch of senior Iranian officials tied to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), in one of Washington DC's most aggressive intelligence gambits against Tehran, since war began. The bulletin published by US identified six people including Iran's new Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, and top national security official Ali Larijani.
Washington Targets Iran's New Power Structure
The State Department has formally listed Mojtaba Khamenei, son of the late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Iran's newly installed paramount leader, under its Rewards for Justice programme, alongside several high-ranking figures embedded within Iran's security and intelligence apparatus.
Officials framed the reward as part of a broader campaign to disrupt the IRGC's operational networks, which Washington accuses of masterminding attacks on American personnel and providing material support to designated terrorist organisations across the Middle East and beyond.
Who Is on the US Rewards List?
Beyond Mojtaba Khamenei himself, the Rewards for Justice programme names Ali Asghar Hejazi, deputy chief of staff for the Supreme Leader's Office, and Ali Larijani, secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council - two figures who sit at the very heart of Iran's post-Khamenei governance architecture.
The list extends further into Iran's security establishment. Yahya Rahim Safavi, a senior military adviser to the supreme leader; Esmail Khatib, Iran's minister of intelligence; and Eskandar Momeni, the country's interior minister, are all named. Together, the individuals represent a cross-section of the institutional muscle that sustains the Islamic Republic's grip on power.
The IRGC: Why Washington Considers It a Terrorist Engine
The State Department was unambiguous in its assessment of the organisation underpinning these officials. "The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), part of Iran's official military, plays a central role in Iran's use of terrorism as a key tool of Iranian statecraft," it stated.
The department went further, detailing the IRGC's role as a sponsor and director of proxy forces: "In addition, the IRGC has created, supported, and directed other terrorist groups. The IRGC is responsible for numerous attacks targeting Americans and US facilities, including those that have killed US citizens."
From Revolutionary Vanguard to Economic and Political Powerhouse
What makes the IRGC a particularly formidable adversary, analysts note, is that it long since outgrew its original mandate as a revolutionary armed force. "Since its founding in 1979, the IRGC has gained a substantial role in executing Iran's foreign policy," the department noted. “The group now wields control over vast segments of Iran's economy and is influential in Iranian domestic politics.”
This deep institutional entrenchment - spanning military, commercial, and political domains - is precisely what makes intelligence on its leadership so valuable to Washington, and so difficult to obtain.
How the Rewards for Justice Programme Works
The Rewards for Justice initiative, administered by the State Department's Diplomatic Security Service, allows the United States government to offer financial compensation to individuals who furnish credible intelligence enabling the disruption of terrorist networks or the identification of those responsible for attacks against Americans.
The department confirmed that individuals providing verifiable, actionable information could be eligible for awards of up to $10 million - a sum that reflects the perceived strategic value of penetrating Iran's most guarded institutions.
About the Author
Sayantani Biswas is an assistant editor at Livemint with seven years of experience covering geopolitics, foreign policy, international relations and global power dynamics. She reports on Indian and international politics, including elections worldwide, and specialises in historically grounded analysis of contemporary conflicts and state decisions. She joined Mint in 2021, after covering politics at publications including The Telegraph. <br> She holds an MPhil in Comparative Literature from Jadavpur University (2019), with a specialisation in postcolonial Latin American literature. Her research examined economic nationalism through Eduardo Galeano’s Open Veins of Latin America. She also writes on political language, cultural memory and the long shadows of conflict. <br> Biswas grew up in Durgapur, an industrial town in West Bengal shaped by migration, which drew families from across India to the Durgapur Steel Plant. As the only child in a joint family, she spent years listening—almost obsessively—to her grandparents’ testimonies of struggle, fear and loss as they fled Bangladesh during the Partition of 1947. This formative exposure to lived historical memory later converged with her training in Comparative Literature, equipping her to analyse socio-economic structures and their reverberations. <br> Outside the newsroom, she gravitates towards cultural history and critical theory, returning often to texts such as Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed. As a journalist, she is committed to accuracy, intellectual rigour and fairness, and believes political reporting demands not only clarity and speed, but historical depth, contextual precision, and a disciplined resistance to spectacle.