Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed in joint US-Israeli strikes, ruled Iran for more than three decades. The longest-serving head of state in the Middle East died at the age of 86 on February 28. The central figure in the Persian Gulf reshaped the balance of power through confrontation with the West.
Khamenei, an ardent supporter of the development of Iran’s nuclear program, has built a strong network of regional militant groups. Khamenei took over the reins of Iran in 1989, which was bankrupt after an eight-year war with neighboring Iraq – one of the deadliest global conflicts of the last century.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei served as Iran’s supreme leader from 1989 until he was killed in Tehran on Saturday. After the accession of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, he exercised control over government departments, the military and the judiciary. Khamenei was elected to power and as the president of Iran in 1981 after the assassination of Mohammad-Ali Rajai. He served as the president of Iran until 1989, when he became the supreme leader of the Islamist regime.
He played a key role in the 1979 Iranian revolution that overthrew the regime of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi – the Shah of Iran.
“Khamenei, through guile and persistence, was able to accomplish something quite miraculous. He turned Iran into a regional power that controlled quite a wide geography,” Afshon Ostovar, an associate professor at the Naval Postgraduate School in California, was quoted as saying by the Wall Street Journal.
Khamenei’s network of armed groups in the Middle East controlled a land corridor leading from Tehran through Iraq and Syria to Lebanon at the height of Iran’s expansion. According to a Wall Street Journal report, Khamenei used this network to transport weapons and personnel.
Born in Mashhad in 1939
Khamenei was born in Mashhad, northeastern Iran, in 1939. The second of eight children in a religious family, his father was a middle-ranking cleric from the Shia branch of Islam, the dominant sect in Iran, according to a BBC report.
Khamenei’s education centered on the Koran, and he qualified as a cleric at the age of 11. But like many religious leaders of the time, his work was as much political as it was spiritual.
An effective orator, Khamenei joined critics of the Shah of Iran, the monarch who was eventually overthrown by the Islamic Revolution. For years, Khamenei lived underground or rotted in prison. He was arrested six times by the Shah’s secret police, suffered torture and internal exile.
Donald Trump announced the death of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei
US President Donald Trump was one of the first to confirm the death of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. In a post on Truth Social, he said Iran’s supreme leader had been killed and said it was the “biggest chance” for the Iranian people to “take back” their country. According to the US president, “heavy and precise bombing” will continue for a week or as long as necessary. Later, Iranian state media confirmed the news of his death
Several members of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s family were also killed in Israel’s rocket attacks, including a daughter, son-in-law and grandson, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards (IRGC)-affiliated Fars News confirmed.
