A new stipend for seminary students may herald a rise in religious status for the hidden Supreme Leader.
A substantial monthly payment in the name of Mojtaba Khamenei has recently been added to the stipends received by Iranian seminary students. The new disbursement comes on top of the seminary remittances that continue to be paid in the name of Mojtaba’s father, the late Ali Khamenei, as well as others, including the influential Iraq-based Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. The stipend, whose funding source is entirely unclear, could help set the stage for Mojtaba Khamenei to be declared a supreme Shia legal authority—a “source of emulation,” or marja.
One cleric tells Resanegar, Tehran Bureau’s economic unit, that the payment appears to be calculated at one million tomans per month for each member of a student’s household. Like many in the field, the cleric—speaking on condition of anonymity—has continued his studies deep into adulthood; in his case, he has been at his seminary for nearly 20 years. For his family of five, of which he is the sole wage earner, the new remittance amounts to five million tomans, increasing the monthly income he can rely on by almost 50 percent. He says:
“Previously, as a level-four seminary student, which qualifies for the highest stipend bracket, I received six million tomans a month from Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, four million from Ayatollah Sistani, and around two million from other marjas. Recently, I have also received five million tomans from Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, described as a ‘cost-of-living allowance.’”
The resulting total of 17 million tomans in stipends is still well below the minimum monthly compensation package (base wage plus mandatory benefits) for a private-sector worker with the same family size and seniority, which comes to around 25 million tomans.
An official seminary stipend, or shahriyeh, is money paid by a recognized source of emulation. Mojtaba Khamenei, whose 57th birthday was observed on September 8, does not currently hold the rank of marja, so payments made in his name cannot formally be referred to as shahriyeh. The remittances associated with the new Supreme Leader will continue to be described in cost-of-living terms unless and until he attains marja status. That, of course, assumes he is alive. Since the February 28 killing of his father at the Tehran leadership compound where Mojtaba was also present, apart from several written messages attributed to him, there has barely been a sign that Iran’s new paramount figure actually survived the US missile strike—no new video or audio recording, not even a photograph.
Traditionally, a Shia scholar seeking to attain the status of marja would first obtain attestations of their faculty for ijtihad (independent legal reasoning) from several prominent authorities. They would then write a resaleh, a treatise of religious rulings, and announce their marjaʿiyya upon its publication. Following the 1989 death of the Islamic Republic’s founder and first Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the Society of Seminary Teachers of Qom began to assert control over the marjaʿiyya process, in part to elevate Khomeini’s successor, Ali Khamenei.
The campaign to declare Ali Khamenei, who had little scholarly reputation, a marja initially met with widespread opposition. His supporters, however, brought the question of his religious authority into the streets. In December 1993, during the funeral of Grand Ayatollah Mohammad Reza Golpayegani, then regarded as the most learned marja in the Shia world, they chanted, “Both leader and marja: Khamenei.” One year later, just three days after the death of Grand Ayatollah Mohammad Ali Araki, the Society of Seminary Teachers formally announced Ali Khamenei as a marja.
A scholar of religious studies familiar with the workings of the Qom seminary, observing that the sum added to clerics’ stipends in Mojtaba Khamenei’s name is considerable relative to their regular shahriyeh, argues that it could serve two purposes at once: silencing critical seminarians, and helping pave the way for him to be presented as a marja. Recalling the process by which Ali Khamenei’s marja‘iyya was declared, the scholar says:
“History is repeating itself. The same current and ideological faction that elevated Ali Khamenei to the rank of marja virtually overnight [Editor’s note: five years] after he became leader is now preparing the ground for Mojtaba Khamenei’s marja‘iyya.
“This process will accelerate after the death of Ayatollah [Mousa] Shobeiri Zanjani, because he was the only marja who might have opposed such a decision. The remaining Qom marjas who enjoy the backing of the Society of Seminary Teachers would, in all likelihood, remain silent.”
As of the beginning of the year, seven ayatollahs, including Ali Khamenei, were recognized as marjas by the Society of Seminary Teachers. Of them, Ayatollah Shobeiri Zanjani alone was regarded as independent rather than aligned with the regime. Following his death on September 20 at the age of 98, it is expected that the five remaining sources of emulation would offer no resistance to the naming of Mojtaba as a marja.
The late Ayatollah Hussein Ali Montazeri, once designated as Khomeini’s successor until their falling out over the mass execution of political prisoners in 1988, was among the most serious opponents of Ali Khamenei’s marja‘iyya and never accepted that he was qualified for the position. In a historic speech in November 1997 that led to his house arrest, Montazeri described Khamenei’s elevation as “the degradation of Shia marja‘iyya.” A similar process appears to be unfolding again.
A modest income
Following the announcement of Mojtaba Khamenei as leader and the subsiding of the war, one million tomans a month began to be paid for every member of a seminary student’s household, and the allowance is expected to continue. In other words, a clerical family with two children would see its monthly income rise by four million tomans.
Seminary stipends are funded through contributions made to marjas. In the past, each marja’s office paid students directly in cash, with the amount based on the student’s level of study. During the first three days of every lunar month, seminary students could visit the offices of the marjas in person and collect their stipends.
In recent years, at the direction of the Supreme Leader’s office, that system has changed. Payments from the various marjas are now consolidated and deposited onto students’ stipend cards, eliminating the need for them to pay a visit to each marja’s office.
According to information gathered for this report, the maximum monthly seminarian payout had reached roughly 14 million tomans in the Persian calendar year 1405 (March 2026–March 2027). With the addition of Mojtaba Khamenei’s cost-of-living allowance, for a cleric paid by stipend heading a relatively large but not uncommon household of six, the figure has risen to approximately 20 million tomans a month (currently worth about $80 USD at free market exchanges, per Bonbast.com). That remains below the minimum monthly compensation package even for an unmarried entry-level worker in the private sector, currently 21.8 million tomans.
Some seminary students rely entirely on their monthly stipends and have no other source of income. Most clerics, however, also earn money from giving sermons, leading prayers, and similar activities.
Leaving aside prominent preachers, some of whom earn very large sums, dependence on seminary income generally places clerics in the lower-middle-income bracket. For that reason, some choose to leave their seminary positions and secure permanent government or state-affiliated employment.
Under Qom seminary regulations, students who hold permanent jobs and receive insurance through other institutions are removed from the list of those eligible for seminary stipends and services.
A most exceptional student
Although clerics and seminary students do not, on paper, receive a direct share of the national budget and the government does not transfer money directly into their personal accounts, both the seminaries and the Seminary Services Center have dedicated lines in the annual state budget.
The budget allocated to the seminaries is intended for administration, executive bodies, and academic and educational expenses. Funds allocated to the Seminary Services Center, however, are used to cover students’ housing, household goods, health insurance, and welfare services. Seminary students therefore benefit indirectly from public funds, even though not all of the Seminary Services Center’s budget comes from the government. Part of it is provided by the Supreme Leader’s office.
The budget of the Seminary Services Center, listed under line 114084 in the current annual national budget, is 16 trillion tomans. Based on 220,000 seminary students receiving cost-of-living assistance, this amounts to roughly six million tomans per student per month, paid into the center’s accounts.
It is not clear how much the Seminary Services Center receives each year from the Supreme Leader’s office, because the government allocation is not its only source of funding. According to one seminary expert, the leadership also transfers money into the center’s accounts. If the Supreme Leader’s office were contributing an amount equal to the government’s allocation, the per-student figure would rise to around 12 million tomans a month.
The seminary’s housing cooperatives, consumer cooperatives, and healthcare institutions all rely on the Seminary Services Center’s budget to provide students with basic needs.
From this perspective, the sums being paid into seminary students’ accounts in Mojtaba Khamenei’s name can be significant in the lives of many recipients, approaching the per-student amount allocated through the Seminary Services Center.
One reported recipient of shahriyeh, at least until recently, would not have been among those who relied on the stipends for his family’s livelihood: Mojtaba himself.
Earlier this year, an extensive Bloomberg account described how Mojtaba Khamenei had become fabulously wealthy during his father’s nearly 37 years as Supreme Leader. In Great Britain alone, Bloomberg found that his portfolio of luxury property holdings is valued at over £100 million. A March 10 Tehran Bureau report detailed the vast network of businesses and “charitable organizations” through which Mojtaba has acquired assets around the globe worth in excess of $450 million, with some estimates as high as $3 billion.
On July 27, Expediency Discernment Council member and former Majles speaker Gholam Ali Haddad Adel dismissed claims that Mojtaba Khamenei had massively enriched himself during the past three and a half decades as “lies” in an interview with ILNA. Haddad Adel, the father of Mojtaba’s late wife, among those killed in the February 28 missile strike, said of his son-in-law: “He was a seminary student and received the same stipend as other seminary students.”
Now that the “seminary student” is Supreme Leader, the favor is being returned in his name. How that happened remains an open question, as does the source of the money, which would amount to several trillion tomans a year, and how long it will flow.