FILE - Mojtaba Khamenei, the son of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, center, attends the annual Quds, or Jerusalem Day rally in Tehran, Iran, on May 31, 2019. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi, File)

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Iranian state TV announced Sunday that Mojtaba Khamenei, son of the country’s late supreme leader, has been named his successor.

The younger Khamenei had long been considered a contender, even before an Israeli strike killed his father at the start of the war, and despite never being elected or appointed to a government position.

Iran’s powerful paramilitary Revolutionary Guard answers to the supreme leader, and now Khamenei will have the central say in war strategy. The announcement came on the ninth day of the war and after signs of a rift among Iranian officials as the country awaited a decision by the 88-seat Assembly of Experts, a group of clerics that selects Iran’s supreme leader.

U.S. President Donald Trump told ABC News earlier Sunday he wants a say in who comes to power once the war is over; a new leader “is not going to last long” without his approval, Trump added. The U.S. and Israel killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in the war’s opening airstrikes.