Ali Khamenei

Ali Khamenei: The Full Biography of Iran’s Supreme Leader Who Survived Assassination

Ali Khamenei is one of the most powerful and longest-ruling leaders in the modern Middle East. As the second Supreme Leader of Iran, Ali Khamenei has shaped his country’s religious, political, and military direction since 1989. Yet few people know that Ali Khamenei survived a brutal assassination attempt years before rising to the top of Iran’s theocracy, an event that left him with permanent physical injuries. This article explores the complete life story of Ali Khamenei — from his modest childhood in Mashhad to his current role steering Iran through one of the most turbulent periods in its modern history.

Early Life and Family Background of Ali Khamenei

On the 27th of June 1981, Ali Khamenei, a religious cleric and rising political figure in Iran following the Revolution of 1979, arrived at the Abuzar Mosque in Tehran. Once inside, an assassin disguised as a journalist placed a tape recorder in front of Ali Khamenei. It exploded a minute later, severely injuring Ali Khamenei and leaving him with permanent injuries. Notwithstanding his near-death experience, Ali Khamenei went on to become the Supreme Leader of Iran. But who had tried to assassinate Ali Khamenei, and how did this assassination attempt shape the outlook of the man who has led Iran since 1989? This is the story of Ali Khamenei, the second Supreme Leader of Iran.

The man known to history as Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was born on the 17th of July 1939 in the city of Mashhad in the province of Khorasan, situated in north-eastern Iran. Iran was then known as the Imperial State of Iran, unlike today when it is officially called the Islamic Republic of Iran. There is a dispute over Ali Khamenei’s exact date of birth, with some accounts stating that he was born on the 19th of April 1939.

Ethnic Roots and Family Origins

His father was Javad Ali Khamenei, a Shia cleric who was born in the village of Khamaneh in the province of East Azerbaijan, situated in the northwest of Iran. The family takes its name from this village. Javad was of Iranian Azeri ethnicity, meaning he and his son are Azeri. This ethnic group form a large minority within Iran itself, but are more dominant further north in Azerbaijan. Ethnic Azeris are the largest minority in Iran after the Persian majority and are concentrated in the northwest of the country. After studying as a Shia scholar at Najaf in Iraq, home to the Imam Ali Shrine, the holiest in Shia Islam, Javad relocated to Mashhad, one of the holiest places in this branch of Islam. There he met Khadijeh Mirdamadi, whom he married as his second wife. In all he had eight children. Several of Ali’s siblings have risen to positions of prominence within Iranian society, though this has occasionally seen them clash with Ali in his role as Supreme Leader of the country since 1989. For instance, his younger brother Hadi is a cleric who was a member of the Iranian parliament, the Majles, between 2000 and 2004. Hadi was also a member of the reform-minded Association of Combatant Clerics. This organisation was then arguing for a reduction in the power of the Supreme Leader, in addition to a reduction in the influence of the mullahs and mosque leaders who surround him.

Religious Education in Mashhad and Najaf

Ali’s education began at a young age in Mashhad. This was substantially at the direction of his father, who emerged as a mujtahid, a scholar who was deemed to be of sufficient religious knowledge and learning so as to be able to interpret religious law himself. At the same time, Javad Ali Khamenei was sometimes absent from Mashhad and returned to Najaf in Iraq on occasion. The family lived a modest life in Mashhad. They were not wealthy or possessed of many material trappings, yet they were held in high regard within the community on account of Javad’s status as a respected religious cleric. He often led Friday prayers and was consulted by local leaders. Similarly, Ali’s mother was well-educated and taught him about Persian history, art and literature. Ali Khamenei has since emphasised the austere lifestyle of his childhood, claiming that the family lived in a one-room house with little else beyond a basement and subsisted primarily on bread, dates and raisins. This is quite possibly an exaggeration of how modest their lives were.

Ali Khamenei’s life was shaped by political developments in his homeland from even before he was born. Iran, or Persia as it was known throughout history until modern times, was one of less than a dozen nations in the Middle East, Africa and Asia that was not colonized in the nineteenth century. Iran thus sits alongside Abyssinia or Ethiopia, and Liberia in Africa, as well as countries such as Japan, China and Siam in Asia. Persia had a long and proud history, with empires having emerged from this part of Central Asia since antiquity. Between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries it was the power in the region which stopped the further eastward expansion of the Turkish Ottoman Empire. This occurred under the Safavid Dynasty. At the end of the eighteenth century, the Qajar Dynasty came to power. The Qajar rulers adhered to Twelver Shia Islam, a branch of Shia Islam which holds that there were twelve legitimate imams or leaders of the Islamic faith after the Prophet Muhammad, beginning with his son-in-law, Ali, and ending with Muhammad al-Mahdi, the latter of whom will, like the Second Coming of Christ in Christian belief, re-emerge one day to redeem the Islamic faith. The Qajar Dynasty’s adherence to Twelver Shia forms an important link with the Iranian Revolution which would start Ali Khamenei’s ascent to become the Supreme Leader of Iran in modern times.

The Qajar rulers technically reigned down to 1925. However, already in 1921, the Middle East had been reshaped after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire at the end of the First World War. In that year, a military coup had occurred in Iran which was led by a military officer by the name of Reza Shah Pahlavi. He claimed full power in 1925 and established the Pahlavi Dynasty, a much more secular-orientated royal house. He was himself overthrown in 1941 during the Second World War after the British and Soviets invaded Iran out of fear that it was about to ally with Nazi Germany. His 21-year old son, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, was placed on the throne, though Iran remained under close Allied oversight for the duration of the war. Post-1945 he began to rule in his own right. His lengthy reign of nearly four decades was a strange mix of authoritarianism and liberalism in which Iran was one of the few countries in the Middle East with a relaxed religious environment. However, the Shah’s secret police, the SAVAK, oversaw a system of mass surveillance, repression and torture of perceived opponents of the regime.

The Shah’s regime was anxious to keep a handle on religious movements that it believed might challenge the secular rule of the Shah. Despite this, Iran was home to many religious schools that adhered to rigid and conservative values, and Iran remained a profoundly religious society even under the Shah’s rule. Ali Khamenei’s early life reflected this. In the mid-1950s he began studying under leading religious scholars like Ayatollah Sheikh Hashem Qazvani in Mashhad. The city was a renowned religious site owing to it being the resting place of the eighth imam of Twelver Shia, Ali ibn Musa. Mashhad was also home to many Shia scholars and ayatollahs other than Ali’s father. ‘Ayatollah’ is a name for a high-ranking religious leader or scholar within Twelver Shia Islam.

From Mashhad, Ali Khamenei crossed the border briefly to study in the city of Najaf in Iraq, the burial place of Ali, the first imam of Shia Islam. As the resting place of Ali, Najaf is consequently amongst the holiest places in the world for Shia Muslims. After a brief period there, Ali Khamenei returned to Iran and settled in the city of Qom. It was here that he began studying under Ayatollah Khomeini in 1957, the individual who, over two decades later, would become the first Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran. By 1957, Khomeini was already developing a reputation as a prominent opponent of the Shah’s regime.

Political Awakening Under the Shah’s Regime

Ali Khamenei’s life was shaped in many ways by the events of 1963. Early that year the Shah launched a policy programme designed to modernise Iran along western lines and expand its economy. A core element of what is termed the White Revolution included an attempt to reform the system of landholding in Iran. This threatened to undermine the traditional structures of Persian society and aroused opposition from within the clerical class. In the midst of it, Ayatollah Khomeini became even more vocal in his opposition to the Shah’s regime than he had been already. He was placed under arrest, an action which led to protests around the country in June 1963, during which hundreds of people lost their lives.

The Ayatollah continued to denounce both the Shah and the influence of his western allies in Iran, particularly that of the United States. As a result, the Shah determined that the best way to deal with the threat of Khomeini was to simply remove him from Iran. In 1964, Khomeini was sent into exile. He spent over fourteen years outside of Iran, first briefly in Turkey, then primarily in Iraq. Towards the end of the 1970s, he spent a few months in France. In Iraq he became a focus for foreign opposition to the Shah and, as a result, fellow dissidents joined him in exile there. Ali Khamenei was not among them. Although he was a keen supporter of his former teacher and his political views, Ali remained in Iran. He also left Qom and returned to his native Mashhad to help care for his aging father, who had become blind in one eye. This is significant for later events, as it meant that Ali Khamenei never completed the full religious training at Qom or Tehran. This religious training, for some, was later perceived as vital to qualify for the position of the Supreme Leader of the country.

Arrest and Persecution Under SAVAK

Ali Khamenei did begin to play a major role in the clerical opposition to the Shah’s rule within Iran in the period between the White Revolution in 1963 and the Iranian Revolution of the late 1970s. In 1967 he helped translate The Future in Islamic Lands by the Egyptian religious scholar, Sayyid Qutb, from the Arabic into Farsi. Qutb was a major influence on the subsequent development of groups like the Muslim Brotherhood and Al-Qaeda. His book called for religious revolution to overthrow secular forces across the Middle East like the government of the Shah. Ali Khamenei also wrote a foreword to the translation which bluntly stated that, quote, “the future belongs to Islam.” Publication of the book was broadly prevented by SAVAK, the Shah’s secret police. It was the beginning of a period in which Ali Khamenei was arrested on several occasions and held for months at a time. In between these periods of detention, he travelled around the country and gave sermons and speeches in which he railed against the Shah. His most prolonged period of arrest was in 1975 when he was detained in Tehran between January and August of that year. During this time he was largely kept in solitary confinement and his family was not informed as to his location.

Formation of the Association of Combatant Clergy

Undeterred, in 1977, he helped found the Association of Combatant Clergy which, as the name suggests, was a religious group set up to oppose the regime.

Ali Khamenei’s family life was modest during these years. In 1964, after returning to Mashhad from Qom, he married his sole wife, Mansoureh Khojasteh Bagherzadeh. Despite his subsequent standing within Iranian society, very little is known about her. There are, for instance, no photographs of her and few even know what she looks like. In an interview which she once gave, she described how she and her husband had discussed the possibility of his arrest by the Shah’s government from the earliest days of their marriage. Mansoureh stated that she agreed with her husband’s mission. She viewed her own role as being to provide stability in their household during his frequent bouts of imprisonment. They had six children: four sons named Mostafa, Mojtaba, Masoud and Meysam, and two daughters, Hoda and Boshra. The family continued to live a relatively frugal life even after the Iranian Revolution and Ali Khamenei’s rise to power.

Ali Khamenei is also said to have been a more open-minded religious cleric in some respects than his contemporaries, such as the Ayatollah Khomeini. Ali, for instance, was known to read western books like the works of the American author John Steinbeck. This doesn’t necessarily suggest he was approving of western culture, but it does demonstrate a greater desire to understand the mind of the average American and westerner in a way which the Ayatollah did not countenance. Several of the western books which Ali Khamenei read simply intensified the cleric’s critical views of western culture.

The Iranian Revolution of 1979

By the time that Ali Khamenei contributed to the founding of the Association of Combatant Clergy in 1977 the political environment in Iran was deteriorating. In spite of efforts by the Shah and his secret police to clamp down on opposition, anti-Pahlavi sentiment was growing and there were an increasing number of public demonstrations of unrest. Opposition swelled in 1978, driven by riots and police crackdowns that led to hundreds of deaths. A galvanizing incident was the Cinema Rex Fire of the 19th of August 1978 when over 400 people were killed after the cinema in question in the city of Abadan was barricaded shut and set on fire. Islamic terrorists were probably responsible, but the Shah’s government was blamed at the time.

A sign of how weak the regime had become was seen when it pressured the government of Saddam Hussein to force Ayatollah Khomeini out of Iraq. It was clear that Khomeini’s presence in Iran’s neighbouring country was feared by the Shah’s regime. Khomeini left for France, even as the protests intensified in Iran in the final months of 1978. The Iranian Revolution came to a peak in January 1979 when hundreds of thousands of protestors took to the streets of Tehran and other cities. Meanwhile, the Shah, whose health was in severe decline, fled from Iran on the 16th of January 1979.

The Fall of the Shah

By then the Islamic Revolutionary Council had been formed as a 13-man body, charged with overseeing the transition to Islamic rule as the Shah’s government collapsed. Its actions were clandestine. However, it was revealed in 1980 that Ali Khamenei was a member. This was a revelation which surprised many and which signified his ascent as one of the leaders of the Revolution. Just over two weeks after the Shah’s flight, the Ayatollah landed at Mehrabad International Airport in Tehran from France on the 1st of February. Over the next ten days, what remained of the secular government that had controlled Iran since the 1920s, collapsed. The 11th of February is typically celebrated today as the conclusion of the Iranian Revolution, ten days after the Ayatollah’s return to the country.

Ali Khamenei’s Role in the New Islamic Republic

The Iranian Revolution had succeeded in overthrowing the government of the Shah. Yet, the issue of what kind of alternative government would take its place was not as simple an issue as is often assumed. The opposition to the Pahlavi Dynasty had not been a unified Islamist movement led by Ayatollah Khomeini from exile, and by clerics like Ali Khamenei from within. Instead, opposition to the Shah had consisted of a broad coalition of Shia clerics, other Islamic groups, more secular-minded politicians and even left-wing entities tied to the Soviet Union within the context of the Cold War. Throughout 1979 there was a tug of war between these varying groups to see what kind of political system would be put in place.

There were many who wished for a continuation of the kind of secular society that the Shah had overseen, just with the Shah removed and a western-style democracy created. However, the pro-democracy and moderate Islamist factions lost out in the course of 1979 as the Ayatollah and the clerics cemented their control over the country. In December 1979, Khomeini was established as the first Supreme Leader of the newly-created Islamic Republic of Iran. There were democratic elements to the new state, but effectively it became a theocracy. The Ayatollah’s image now adorned public places all over Tehran and other major cities in the course of the 1980s.

Ali Khamenei played a role in this process. He was involved in the establishment of the Islamic Republican Party, the official government party that would dominate the country’s politics down to 1987. He was also given a senior role in purging the Iranian army and security forces of officers that were residually loyal to the Shah’s regime.

The 1981 Assassination Attempt on Ali Khamenei

Ali Khamenei nearly lost his life early on in the history of the new Islamic Republic in an incident which left him with life-altering injuries. On the 27th of June 1981 he arrived at the Abuzar Mosque in Tehran to speak with members of the mosque’s congregation. Ali Khamenei’s position as a member of the new parliament, and as the leader of Friday prayers in the capital, meant that he was fast-emerging as a prominent member of the Islamic regime. This made him a target for dissidents.

The Abuzar Mosque Bombing

The government was far from secure by the early 1980s. It faced a range of counter-revolutionary forces in the shape of continued supporters of the Pahlavi Dynasty, Marxist groups supported by the Soviet Union like the People’s Mojahedin Organisation of Iran, and also the Forqan Group. The latter were a militant religious group that combined a social view of Iranian society, opposing wealthy Iranian business figures tied to the new regime. The Forqan group also looked to dismantle the clerical system that placed great power in the hands of figures like Supreme Leader Khomeini and Ali Khamenei. That day in the Abuzar Mosque in Tehran, a member of the Forqan Group disguised as a journalist placed a tape recorder in front of Ali Khamenei to apparently record what he said as he answered questions. About a minute later the device started to make a whistling sound. It then exploded. A message was later found inside the remains of the device saying ‘A gift from the Forqan Group’.

Lasting Injuries and Recovery

Ali Khamenei was badly injured in the blast and was taken to hospital. He survived, but the impact had severely damaged the nerves in his right arm, which has remained almost completely paralyzed ever since. His neck was also hit and his vocal cords were damaged permanently too. This is why when Ali Khamenei speaks at Friday Prayers or delivers addresses to the nation, he appears to be quite softly spoken. His vocal cords have never entirely recovered from the assassination attempt in 1981.

Ali Khamenei as President of Iran (1981–1989)

Despite the substantial injuries he suffered during the assassination attempt in 1981, Ali Khamenei very quickly rose to become President of Iran. Only six days before the assassination attempt, the first President of Iran since the Revolution, Abolhassan Banisadr, was impeached at the Ayatollah’s instigation. This was because Banisadr was perceived as pursuing an overly secular line in government. Then, his successor as second President of Iran, Mohammad-Ali Rajai, was assassinated on the 30th of August 1981 after just weeks in office in a bombing which the People’s Mojahedin are believed to have orchestrated.

Accordingly, fresh presidential elections were once again held on the 2nd of October 1981. Although he was not fully recovered yet from his injuries, Ali Khamenei was on the ballot. It is important to realise how presidential elections were and continue to be held in the Islamic Republic. Elections are alleged to be free and fair so far as voters are able to cast their votes. Whoever a majority of people select is elected as president. However, the candidates that appear on the ballot must be approved by the Supreme Leader and the clerics who rule the country. There is some element of choice and Iran has more of a democratic element to its government than, say, the complete authoritarianism of a country like Saudi Arabia. Ali Khamenei won the vote in a landslide and became the third President of Iran since the Revolution.

The Iran-Iraq War

Ali Khamenei served as president of Iran for eight years down to 1989. Throughout this time, the overwhelming issue which dominated the country’s politics and life was war with neighbouring Iraq, which was well underway when he entered office. The dictator of that country, Saddam Hussein, had invaded Iran in September 1980, fearful that the Revolution could spread to his country. Saddam was a Sunni Muslim ruler of a country with a Shia Muslim majority. Hussein was backed by American advanced weaponry and hoped to win a sharp, short war. Instead, his initial invasion was repelled and from 1981 onwards most of the fighting took place on Iraqi soil. It became an extremely bitter war, lasting nearly eight years, resulting in more than a million deaths according to estimates, and even involving extensive use of chemical weapons.

After Saddam Hussein realised that he had made a strategic error in attacking Iran and that Iran, which had a far larger population and more resources, would probably win a prolonged struggle, he sued for a ceasefire and peace negotiations in 1982. Ali Khamenei was apparently amongst the senior Iranian politicians and clerics who favoured peace, and demonstrated himself to have been a moderate in terms of the war effort. However, Ali Khamenei and his allies in this regard were overruled. On several occasions in the years that followed he visited the front as president.

Domestic Governance as President

At home, he oversaw punitive courts and crackdowns on dissidents as the regime continued to impose its brand of religious rule on the country. He won a huge majority of 87% to qualify for a second term as president in 1985.

Becoming the Second Supreme Leader of Iran

When Ayatollah Khomeini returned to Iran in 1979 after fourteen years in exile, he was already in his late seventies, albeit his exact date of birth is debated. This means that his time as the first Supreme Leader of Iran was always going to be limited. In the end, he held power for a decade, dying on the 3rd of June 1989 as he neared his 90th year. He had suffered a heart attack in 1986 and with his health deteriorating there had been a lot of talk in Tehran about the succession. The last thing the clerics wanted was a long period of indecision after he passed away. This would depict the regime as being weak and indecisive.

Succession After Khomeini’s Death

Still, there was no one amongst the leading clerics and political figures that carried anything near the same political and religious weight as Khomeini had. As such, while a number of individuals were being mentioned as potential successors from as early as 1983, when the Ayatollah finally died in the summer of 1989, there was no clear succession plan. The Assembly of Experts, a broader version of the Guardian Council which is to a large extent the un-elected body which actually governs Iran, met the day after the Ayatollah died to adjudicate on the issue of succession. The idea that there would be no new Supreme Leader, and a more conciliar form of government would be set up instead, was dismissed. Instead, votes were held on a potential successor. Although Ali Khamenei was hardly a natural leader, nor was he lobbied for by a broad section of the councillors, it was Ali Khamenei who emerged as a compromise candidate. An unsubstantiated claim was also circulated that, late in his life, the Ayatollah himself had signalled his wish for Ali Khamenei to succeed him. Hence, in the final vote, Ali Khamenei was elected as the second Supreme Leader of Iran by 60 votes to 14, at fifty years of age.

This was a remarkable decision. Ali Khamenei’s religious studies had been cut short in the 1960s when he returned to Mashhad and, as discussed, many regarded him as very under-qualified for the position of Supreme Leader.

Early Challenges as Supreme Leader

Ali Khamenei came to power in a period of flux in the wider Middle East. The war with Iraq had ended in August 1988. Saddam Hussein then focused his attention on escalating the quasi-genocidal persecution of the Kurds in northern Iraq and, catastrophically, a spectacularly misjudged invasion and attempted annexation of Iraq’s small southern neighbour, Kuwait, in August 1990. Although it had previously bolstered Saddam as a regional ally against Iran, the United States responded to Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait with military support for Kuwait’s neighbours and the organisation of a widespread alliance of Arab countries against Iraq. America’s intervention in the matter became known as the First Gulf War, where a quick and decisive American response successfully liberated Kuwait and drove the Iraqi army back into Iraq in full retreat. President George H. Bush, however, did not try to engage in regime change in Iraq, leaving Saddam in power after the war ended in 1991.

Further to the west, the long-running Lebanese Civil War, which had been underway since 1975, came to an end within months of Ali Khamenei becoming Supreme Leader. The Soviet Union had also ended its support for the communist regime in Iran’s eastern neighbour, Afghanistan. The communists would soon be removed from power, and Afghanistan then descended into civil war as the groups which had once allied against the communists now turned on one another. The Taliban would eventually seize power there. On Iran’s northern borders, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan emerged as newly independent states after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990 and 1991. Thus, the wider geopolitical situation around Iran was in major flux during Ali Khamenei’s first years as Supreme Leader. This had political implications at home, as the Afghan Civil War led to the influx of millions of Afghan refugees into Iran and Pakistan. These changes led to an increase in separatist sentiment in Iran as well, amongst groups like the Azeris, Kurds and Balochs.

Expansion of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps

A striking element of Ali Khamenei’s early years as Supreme Leader was the expansion of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The Guard Corps had been set up in May 1979 by Ayatollah Khomeini to act as a kind of internal religious army. The Iranian Army itself would function as a normal national army, but the Guard Corps would function as a bulwark of the religious revolution within the Islamic Republic. This meant it had numerous different roles. For instance, the founders of the Islamic Republic were conscious that there would be western efforts to try to undermine the new regime. Iran produces and controls huge amounts of oil reserves. Given the centrality of oil to the world economy it was thus likely that any action by the Iranian regime could provoke intervention from Western nations whose economies had become underpinned by the availability of oil. This was especially the case at the end of the 1970s. When the world had gone through the Oil Crisis of 1973, a sharp spike in petroleum prices that was never reversed, western economies experienced significant economic disruption through stagflation as a consequence.

The Guard Corps would also act to ensure the religious revolution within Iran against more liberal and secular elements. It had played a substantial role in Iranian politics and life during Khomeini’s time as Supreme Leader. Ali Khamenei expanded it. He also made sure that the Guard Corps were extremely loyal to him. Over the years, the entire command structure of this second army of the state has been micromanaged by the Ayatollah to ensure that its top commanders, and even mid-ranking officers, were hand-picked by him. State resources were used to expand its power and influence over Iranian society and the Guard Corps became a larger instrument of authoritarianism under Ali Khamenei than it had been under the first Supreme Leader. Today there are approximately 125,000 members of the Guard Corps, meaning that nearly one out of every 700 Iranians is a member.

Ali Khamenei’s Regional Proxy Network

Abroad, Ali Khamenei extended the Iranian practice of cultivating anti-Israeli and, to some extent, anti-Sunni proxies around the Middle East.

Hezbollah in Lebanon

The foremost of these was Hezbollah in Lebanon. This organisation is a by-product of the Lebanese Civil War that broke out in 1975. The war broke out in this former French Mandated colony primarily as a result of the arrival of large numbers of Palestinian refugees and militant fighters into the country from 1970. This was also a consequence of the Jordanian Civil War, where large numbers of Palestinians had been expelled from that country. Inspired by the Iranian Revolution of 1979 and then motivated by the invasion of Lebanon by Israel in 1982, Hezbollah was formed by Islamic clerics in southern Lebanon in 1982 as well. It fostered ties with Iran from its inception, with Iran providing it with funding and support. In 1992, two years after the Lebanese Civil War ended, Ali Khamenei sanctioned the group to try to participate in the Lebanese elections. Iran has continued to fund its terrorist activities ever since the 1990s and Hezbollah is considered the most powerful regional proxy fostered by Ali Khamenei in this period.

Hamas in Gaza

The other major proxy that Ali Khamenei has supported since virtually the start of his time as Supreme Leader is Hamas. Hamas is an Islamic group which has become the dominant Palestinian power in the Gaza Strip since the group was founded in 1987. Hamas is a Sunni Muslim, rather than a Shia Muslim entity, but nevertheless enjoys support from Iran as a proxy against the power of Israel. Iran is not the only regional supporter of Hamas; it also has had strong backing from Qatar in particular. Ali Khamenei’s support for both Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon was steady and consistent from the 1990s. Iranian backing has helped these groups to fight many different conflicts with Israel, particularly in the 2000s. Yet Iran’s role in financing and empowering these proxies has really only become an issue of international significance in recent times.

The Houthis in Yemen

A major disruption in another Middle Eastern country in 2014 presented an opportunity for Ali Khamenei and his government to extend their proxy network even further. Yemen in the southwest of the Arabian Peninsula was only unified in 1990. Prior to this, it had been two entities throughout the twentieth century, with part of the country having been a British colony in a strategic location guarding the mouth of the Red Sea from 1839 to 1963. The newly-unified Yemen saw problems emerge based on tribal divisions. These boiled over in 2014 when the long-running Yemen Civil War commenced. Fighting took place between the pre-war established government and the powerful Houthis. The latter is a Shia Muslim group which enjoyed support from Ali Khamenei’s government in Iran. In contrast, the established government, elements of which fled over the border to Saudi Arabia, were supported by Riyadh and several western powers.

Indeed, Iran had been supporting the Houthis by sending them weapons and other material support since as far back as 2009. It could be argued that, were it not for the Iranian support in the years before it commenced, the Yemen Civil War might not have erupted. Since 2014, the war there has acted as a proxy conflict between Shia Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia. This is part of a wider geopolitical cold war between the two countries as both seek to become the dominant Muslim power in the region. That said, there has been a distinct lightening of tensions between the two nations in 2024 and 2025 as the war between Israel and Iran’s proxies in Gaza and Lebanon, and even Iran itself, has flared. Meanwhile, the Houthis have had the better of the fighting generally in Yemen and have controlled the capital, Sanaa, for the duration of the conflict. Their control over this geographically strategic region has allowed Iran to threaten shipping in the Red Sea and, by extension, the Suez Canal in recent times.

The Yemen Civil War raises a bigger question about Iran’s relations with its other Middle Eastern neighbours under Ali Khamenei. As a Shiite nation, the Islamic Republic has been naturally opposed to many of its neighbours, where the majority of Muslim nations are Sunni Muslim. Moreover, while the vast majority of Middle Eastern countries are identified as having a primarily Arab ethnic population, the dominant ethnic group in Iran are Persians, although groups like the Kurds and Balochs make up substantial minorities. Iranians speak Farsi, whereas Arabic is the official tongue of most Middle Eastern nations. This outsider status of Iran within the Middle East is not exactly a result of any policies pursued by Ali Khamenei as Supreme Leader. They are instead historically rooted differences, stretching back to medieval times.

However, Ali Khamenei has not exactly done anything to try to cultivate closer bonds with neighbouring nations either. For instance, Iran has quarrelled with its northern neighbour Azerbaijan over its close ties with the western world. Ali Khamenei condemned the United Arab Emirates’ attempted normalization of relations with Israel in recent years and its overly western, liberal-style society. In addition, there have been several incidents of attacks by the Houthis on the UAE over the years.

Conversely, Iran generally enjoys good relations with its closest neighbours in the Persian Gulf. These are Qatar, with whom it shares control of the South Pars gas field, the largest gas field in the world, and Oman. Although Iraq was traditionally Iran’s bitter enemy in the region, since the end of the US occupation of the country, the Shia majority there has found expression and Iraq has become something of a regional ally. Furthermore, to compensate for its lack of numerous allies in the Middle East and Central Asia, Ali Khamenei has cultivated particularly close relations with Vladimir Putin of Russia and Xi Jinping of China. Iran also remains a member of OPEC, the petroleum cartel led by Saudi Arabia, and has growing bilateral ties with many of the former Soviet nations in Central Asia. As such, Iran is not as isolated as western media outlets often portray it as being.

Iran’s Nuclear Programme Under Ali Khamenei

Another controversial element of Iran’s policies since Ali Khamenei came to power is its nuclear programme. Contrary to what is often stated, Iran’s nuclear programme actually predates the Iranian Revolution. All the way back in 1957 the Shah’s government began working on a nuclear programme with the active assistance of the US government. Ten years later the government of President Lyndon Johnson provided five and half kgs of enriched uranium to its Middle Eastern ally for the nuclear reactor it was developing in Tehran. This was prior to nuclear incidents such as the Six Mile Island and Chernobyl disasters. Many countries in the 1950s and 60s were planning on developing large-scale nuclear power to meet their energy demands. The Shah had plans to develop over a dozen nuclear power plants. Where Iran’s nuclear programme became a problem was when the Iranian Revolution saw the new Islamist regime replace that of the pro-Western Shah.

The Islamic Republic continued to try to develop the nuclear programme in the 1980s. However, progress was slow at this time, in large part because the change of government had blocked off access to some markets that were previously willing to supply Iran with uranium. By the 1990s, with Ali Khamenei in power, a more aggressive nuclear programme was being developed. China provided Iran with a fusion reactor, for instance, in 1993, and contracts were developed with Russia to provide the necessary technical expertise. Iran has since developed multiple nuclear sites at places such as Fordo, Natanz and Isfahan.

Under Ali Khamenei, the regime has consistently maintained that it only wants to develop a civilian nuclear power programme. Yet such a statement is hardly credible for a country which has vast oil and energy resources, and which has suffered so much under crippling economic sanctions as a result of its nuclear plans. Why would Iran countenance these economic sanctions for the sake of building nuclear power plants that it does not need? As we will see, Ali Khamenei’s nuclear programme has been a major determinant of Iran’s entire foreign policy, its domestic economic problems and its general place in the world.

Economic Growth and Struggles Under Ali Khamenei’s Rule

Iran has consistently defended its nuclear programme as simply being designed for civilian purposes to generate nuclear power and to facilitate the country’s scientific development. The latter is a goal of the regime under Ali Khamenei. He has sought to develop a more scientifically-grounded economy and has promoted educational progress in tandem. Despite a range of restrictions, particularly on its oil and gas industry, which makes up a huge proportion of the country’s wealth, Iran’s economy has grown considerably during the three and a half decades that Ali Khamenei has been in power. GDP growth briefly topped 10% annually in the early 1990s, although part of that is attributable to rebuilding the economy after the war with Iraq. For several years in the 2000s, GDP growth averaged around 7% or 8%, buoyed by oil sales to China at the time of its economic miracle.

This economic development, combined with its oil wealth, and the sheer size of the population at over 90 million people, has made Iran one of Asia’s wealthiest nations and inside the top 30 of the world’s wealthiest nations according to most metrics. However, economic growth has stalled since the 2010s. Official unemployment runs at around 10%, and when the country is examined according to GDP per capita it lies outside the world’s top 100 nations, being comparable to countries like Algeria, Indonesia, Namibia and Bolivia. This lacklustre economic performance is particularly surprising in a country with abundant oil and gas resources, all of which could be a key source of wealth and economic growth. This is a key reason why Ali Khamenei’s regime is intensely disliked at home today, especially amongst the younger generations.

Political Repression and Protest Movements

Another cause of the dislike of Ali Khamenei’s government is the wider political system and performance. As we have seen, there are elections held in Iran. This is in contrast to several other Middle Eastern nations, where there isn’t even the vaguest pretence of democratic norms. However, elections in Iran are far from being free and fair. The clerical, religious leadership of the country have the power to veto the candidates and, as such, no opponent of the regime would ever be allowed to stand. That being said, under Ali Khamenei, politicians with differing views on how the country should be governed have stood for, and have won, in elections.

The clearest example of this was the election in 1997 of Mohammed Khatami as the fifth President of Iran. He won re-election in 2001 and served for eight years, a period known as the Reform Era in the history of the Islamic Republic. He ran on a platform which proposed liberalisation of the country and reform of its economy and institutions. Ali Khamenei did not block him from coming to power, despite talk of things such as freedom of expression and a relaxing of the security services and state censorship. However, in 2004, as new elections loomed, Ali Khamenei and the Guardian Council moved to heavily restrict the number of reformist candidates that would be allowed to stand for election. Khatami was prohibited from standing again, as there is a two-term limit on presidents in Iran. More importantly, however, his reform agenda was more widely crushed and the Reform Era came to an end. Since 2005, Ali Khamenei and the clerics have exercised greater control over the country’s politics and there has been a major conservative backlash.

The 1999 Student Protests

The backlash against the Reform Era of Khatami’s time as president was partly owing to the fear Ali Khamenei might be overthrown in future if the liberalisation of Iranian society continued. The clearest manifestation of opposition to his regime at this time occurred in mid-July 1999. Protests began in Tehran after the shutting down of Salam, a daily newspaper published in the capital between 1991 and 1999. The paper was ordered to cease its operations on the 7th of July after it published a report on the internal workings of the government. A day later students in Tehran began protesting its closure. The protests grew in the days that followed, leading to clashes with police, riots, violence and over a dozen deaths. Well over a thousand protestors were eventually arrested in the largest demonstrations against the government since the Iranian Revolution twenty years earlier. The protests in 1999 were an important moment in Ali Khamenei’s drift towards a more conservative and reactionary stance on Iran’s politics.

The 2009 Green Movement

Ten years later, the Green Movement that had first emerged in the summer of 1999 protested again to mark the decade anniversary of the first opposition and also to object to the re-election of Khatami’s successor as president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Ahmadinejad defeated his reformist rival, Mir-Hossein Mousavi, with 63% of the vote. This was a comfortable majority, but the result was disputed and there is little doubt that Ali Khamenei had ordered the election to be rigged, returning Ahmadinejad to power. As millions of Iranians protested in response to the result, Ali Khamenei ordered a partial recount of 10% of the ballots to try to appease public opinion. Beyond this he ordered the Republican Guard Corps to engage in mass arrests. The internet was heavily censored to block discussion of the election results, rallies were banned and universities were temporarily closed. The 2009 protests saw Iran shift even further towards a harsher form of authoritarianism under Ali Khamenei.

Political manipulation has been accompanied by a growing system of surveillance and incarceration as Ali Khamenei has become more conservative and authoritarian since the 2000s. There have always been security services within the Islamic Republic that acted as successors to SAVAK and its actions during the era of the Shah. Ali Khamenei reorganised these shortly after coming to power when he created the Police Command of the Islamic Republic of Iran in 1992. Police Command is an umbrella organisation for the security forces which employs over a quarter of a million people.

The Mahsa Amini Protests of 2022

In the summer of 2005, just as Khatami’s Reform Era was coming to an end, Ali Khamenei ordered the creation of a new unit within the Police Command. This is known as Guidance Patrol, though its native name is Gasht-e-Ershad. It is more colloquially referred to as the ‘morality police’. Its members enforce elements of Sharia Law in the country, notably around female dress codes. The Gasht-e-Ershad reports directly to Ali Khamenei, not to the civilian government. In 2022 the unit garnered international headlines after they effectively killed a young woman named Mahsa Amini while in custody for a minor infringement of the law on headscarves. Her death triggered fresh mass protests around Iran. It also brought attention to the role of the notorious Evin prison in the regime, a place known for torture and rampant human rights abuses. These are instruments of Ali Khamenei’s repressive rule in Iran which emerged in 1989, a system which had deteriorated in particular since the mid-2000s.

Ali Khamenei’s regime has undeniably demonstrated brutality in its clamping down on opposition and its general authoritarianism. However, it must also be said that its methods have been effective from a purely practical standpoint in keeping the regime and the Ayatollah in power over many decades. There is no clearer sign of this than the events of 2011 and 2012. In December 2010, what would become known as the Arab Spring started in Tunisia. Here, a young man named Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire in protest against the corruption and authoritarianism of the government of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. In the spring of 2011 the protests spread across the Maghreb and the Middle East. The Arab Spring led to the overthrow of governments in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt, also sparking the long-running Civil War in Syria.

Protests were seen in many other neighbouring countries and Iran was no exception. The 14th of February 2011 became known as the Day of Rage as thousands of protestors gathered in the streets of Tehran to signal their opposition to the conservatism of the Ayatollah’s government. This was how the Egyptian Revolution started in 2011, with crowds of protestors gathering in Tahrir Square in Cairo from the 25th of January, eventually resulting in the downfall of Egypt’s ruler, Hosni Mubarak. Ali Khamenei was determined that the protests in Tehran would not be allowed to grow and sent in the Guard Corps and other units to crush the opposition. Hezbollah units from Lebanon were even involved. Thus, while protests continued intermittently around the country into March 2011, and there was an effort to revive the movement on its anniversary in February 2012, the Arab Spring was never allowed to take off in Iran under Ali Khamenei’s rule.

Ali Khamenei’s Foreign Policy and International Relations

Iran’s need for domestic stability and control is partly a response to its international position. There is no doubt that the regime had faced opposition from beyond its border. The United States has been an enemy since the hostage crisis that followed immediately after the Iranian Revolution, while Iran has framed itself as the primary opponent of Israel in the Middle East. That being said, there is a kind of before and after element to Ali Khamenei’s foreign policy which is similar to his approach to domestic affairs. Things were more moderate prior to the mid-2000s. Iran was conscious of its position next to Iraq at the time of the First Gulf War. Then, it was extremely sensitive to wider developments in the Middle East and Central Asia in the 2000s as the US invaded and occupied Afghanistan and Iraq in 2001 and 2003.

Ali Khamenei condemned the September 11, 2001 attacks on the US that prefaced these wars, though he was critical of the wars which the US subsequently engaged in. Many within his regime feared that if the US was successful it would move to engage in regime change in Iran after Iraq. As it turned out, the US became bogged down in costly insurgency wars in both Afghanistan and Iraq, effectively losing both wars in the end in costly withdrawals. While relations between Iran and the US thawed somewhat during the period of Barack Obama’s presidency, Ali Khamenei and Iran, through their proxies, Hezbollah and Hamas, continued to wage undeclared war on Israel, a key US ally in the Middle East. Hezbollah and Israel fought a short though destructive war over five weeks in the summer of 2006 in which thousands of Iranian missiles were fired at the Israelis. Hamas and Israel fought four separate wars between 2008 and 2021.

Western Sanctions on Iran

If there has been a tendency to portray Iran as an isolated and pariah state, it is surely a result of the economic sanctions which it has been under for decades. These have limited its ability to trade freely with other nations, particularly when it comes to selling oil, the basis of its economy. The first sanctions imposed against Iran began in November 1979. In that year, the United States placed economic restrictions on the country in response to the Iran hostage crisis, when dozens of people at the US embassy in Tehran were taken hostage. The sanctions were lifted in 1981 when the hostage crisis ended. However, they were re-imposed in 1987, in part because the US had supported Saddam Hussein in the Iran-Iraq War, although there were other complicating factors behind this. Under Ali Khamenei’s leadership the sanctions issue has coalesced around the issue of Iran’s nuclear programme. The severity of the western sanctions have been increased or decreased based on whether or not Iran appears to be co-operating with international oversight of its nuclear programme.

The sanctions have also followed the Iranian regime’s alleged enrichment of uranium, with the ultimate goal of Iran becoming a nuclear-armed nation. Many of these sanctions are imposed by the United Nations. They were loosened considerably in 2015 when Ali Khamenei agreed to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action with the government of President Barack Obama. However, three years later, Obama’s successor, Donald Trump, unilaterally withdrew the US from the agreement. The issue of western sanctions has been a major factor in Iranian politics under Ali Khamenei’s rule, and more generally in the global politics of oil since 1979.

The 2023–2025 Escalation with Israel

Despite the sanctions and the difficulties they created for Iran’s economy, the country’s international position under Ali Khamenei seemed fairly strong until 2024. Its Houthi proxies were winning the civil war in Yemen; its influence was expanding in Iraq; it maintained proxies in the shape of Hezbollah and Hamas that basically controlled the south of Lebanon and the Gaza Strip. It was also developing seemingly ever closer ties with China and Russia, the latter of which Tehran was supplying with large amounts of drones for its war against Ukraine. Then, on the 7th of October 2023, Hamas launched a series of incursions into Israel, killing nearly 1,200 people, taking 251 people hostage and committing a series of atrocities in parts of Israel near the Gaza Strip.

The subsequent retaliation is well-known. Israel launched a large military campaign into the Gaza Strip which has destroyed most of the enclave. In response, Hezbollah began firing rockets into northern Israel and the Houthis began disrupting shipping in the Red Sea. The resulting clashes have seen Iran’s proxies virtually dismantled. The Houthis have been bombed extensively by the United States. Hamas has been crippled, though not entirely destroyed. Hezbollah was severely rocked by both a strike against its leadership and against its military capabilities in southern Lebanon.

The first attack consisted of an extraordinary co-ordinated strike on thousands of Hezbollah’s members, using their walkie-talkie devices, which Israel had managed to intercept and place explosives in. The second Israeli strike came in a series of bombing campaigns against Beirut and other parts of Lebanon. In April, July and October 2024, Iran and Israel began trading direct missile attacks across the Middle East. Then, on the 13th of June 2025, Israel effectively went to war with Iran by launching a series of co-ordinated attacks on the country’s nuclear and military infrastructure. Many of Iran’s leading military officers, politicians and nuclear scientists were killed in precision attacks. Ali Khamenei went into hiding and relayed information about the succession should he be assassinated as well. Days later the United States also engaged in bombing of Iranian nuclear facilities. It is clear that both Israel and Iran would welcome the overthrow of Ali Khamenei and his regime from within. Iran had appeared relatively strong, and a threat to western interests at the start of 2024. However, despite Ali Khamenei’s lifelong efforts to build it up as a regional military power, Iran has been revealed to be something of a paper tiger, unable to fight back against the superior military capabilities of Israel and the USA.

Legacy of Ali Khamenei

Ali Khamenei is one of the longest ruling leaders anywhere in the world today. When he originally came to power as Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran in 1989 the Cold War was still underway. To the north of his country, the USSR controlled large parts of Central Asia, and the Middle East remained a relatively undeveloped part of the world that was only starting to fully benefit from being the world’s great repository of oil. Back then virtually every Muslim country in the region was opposed to Israel’s existence to one degree or another. The Middle East is a very different place today.

Ali Khamenei’s life saw even greater changes. When he was first born, the country was under the rule of the first Shah and was arguably the most secular country in the region under independent, non-western rule. His life has been shaped by the Iranian Revolution which exploded at the end of the 1970s and which came to be led by his old teacher, the Ayatollah Khomeini. Ali largely managed to become his successor in 1989 through a bit of peculiar luck. One president was impeached in the summer of 1981, then a second was assassinated after 29 days in the job, paving the way for Ali Khamenei to become the third President of Iran late in 1981. He used his position as a springboard to become the successor to Ayatollah Khomeini as Supreme Leader in 1989.

In that position, he has led Iran as a religious state, the primary purpose of which is to oppose Israel. For many years it appeared as though this was working. Iran built up a powerful proxy network in the region and developed strong alliances with China and Russia. However, the events of 2024 and 2025 have revealed how hollow his rule has been. Ali Khamenei’s proxy network has been completely compromised by Israeli and American attacks in the summer of 2025. Many will argue that these attacks constitute an attack on the sovereignty of an independent nation without legal justification. But the greater issue, from the perspective of ordinary Iranians, must surely be that the country’s struggle under economic sanctions and other restrictions for decades under Ali Khamenei’s rule has all been for very little.

Not long from now, the elderly Ayatollah will presumably die. The really important question is where will Iran go thereafter? Will it continue along the same conservative, authoritarian religious path that it is on today, or will the reform movement which Ali Khamenei dismantled in the 2000s re-emerge to fashion a more liberal Iran?

What do you think of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei? Has his rule been a disaster for Iran that has led to authoritarian repression and crippling economic sanctions as the regime pursues its never-ending crusade against Israel and the west, or does Iran have legitimate grievances about the way it has been treated by the international community during his time as head of state? Please let us know in the comment section, and in the meantime, thank you very much for reading.

Frequently Asked Questions About Ali Khamenei