Khamenei, a Ruthless and Uncompromising Supreme Leader

At the helm of Iran since 1989, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had, for over three decades, embodied the ideological continuity of the Islamic Republic and its declared confrontation with the United States—the “Great Satan”—and Israel, designated as its implacable enemy.

At 86 years old, the Supreme Leader was the longest-serving leader in the Middle East. Wearing the black turban of the ‘sayyed,’ a symbol of his claimed lineage from the Prophet Muhammad, he concentrated the vast majority of power in his hands. As head of the Iranian theocratic system, he held ultimate authority over religious, political, and military affairs. His portrait dominated the country’s public spaces, while the question of his succession remained taboo.

Ali Khamenei assumed the highest office in June 1989, upon the death of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic. At the time, he was about to turn 50. His rise to power was smooth: president of the Republic for eight years marked by the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988), he consolidated his stature by frequently appearing in military fatigues on the front lines, shaping his image as a committed leader.

Human Rights Violations

His decades in power were punctuated by major crises. In 2009, the Green Movement contested the re-election, deemed fraudulent, of the ultraconservative President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. In 2022, the Women, Life, Freedom uprising ignited the country after the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, arrested for allegedly wearing a headscarf improperly. More recently, the massive demonstrations last January were described by the Supreme Leader as an attempted coup.

Quick to denounce what he called "plots" orchestrated by the United States and Israel, Khamenei regularly equated protests with "sedition," thus legitimizing a brutal and bloody crackdown. The Islamic Republic has been repeatedly criticized by NGOs and the United Nations for human rights violations.

Born on April 19, 1939, in Mashhad, into a modest Azerbaijani family, the son of an imam, he studied in the centers of Shiism, in Najaf (Iraq) and Qom (Iran). His opposition to Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi led to several prison sentences in the 1960s and 1970s. A devoted follower of Khomeini since 1958, he was appointed in 1980 to lead Friday prayers in Tehran, a highly important position. The following year, he was elected president, a few months after surviving an assassination attempt that left his right hand partially paralyzed.

A seasoned orator who led a notoriously austere life, he rarely traveled abroad. His most notable trip was to the United States in 1987 to address the United Nations General Assembly. He resided in a relatively modest home in central Tehran. During the Israeli airstrikes of June 2025 targeting Iranian nuclear facilities, he took refuge in a secret location. Since the Twelve-Day War, his public appearances were no longer broadcast live.

A State Within a State

Under his leadership, the Supreme Leader's office had transformed into a powerful structure, comparable to a state within a state. He oversaw six presidents of varying political orientations, from reformers Mohammad Khatami and Hassan Rouhani to conservatives Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Ebrahim Raisi.

During his tenure, the Revolutionary Guards strengthened their grip on political and economic life, while also extending Tehran’s regional influence, particularly in Lebanon, Iraq, and Syria. However, this “axis of resistance” was weakened after Hamas’s October 2023 attack on Israel and the subsequent Israeli retaliation.

Khamenei distinguished himself with virulent rhetoric against Israel, which he described in 2018 as a “malignant tumor” that needed to be eradicated. He also sparked controversy by referring to the extermination of Jews during World War II as a “myth.” More recently, he had threatened to attack the American aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln deployed in the Gulf, asserting that Washington would not succeed in bringing down the Islamic Republic.

Economically, Iran remained weakened during his rule by international sanctions, despite a slight recovery in the 1990s and after the 2015 agreement governing the Iranian nuclear program.

A Difficult Succession

Less well-known to the general public, the Supreme Leader cultivated a passion for literature. An admirer of Victor Hugo and his novel "Les Misérables," which he described as "prodigious" for its exaltation of "goodness and love," he was also a lover of poetry, a passion inherited from his mother. Before the Revolution, he translated Arabic works and composed poems himself.

In 2019, a photograph released by his office showed him smiling at the Iran Book Fair.

In Tehran, he was leafing through a collection of poems by Ahmad Shamlou, a Marxist poet long reviled by the authorities.

A father of six, he regularly saw speculation about his succession. His son, Mojtaba, an influential cleric without an official position, was sometimes presented as a potential successor, a hypothesis that the Supreme Leader had publicly dismissed.