End of Ayatollah Khamenei's long iron grip on power: 'His strength was hardline clerics and Revolutionary Guards'

 End of Ayatollah Khamenei's long iron grip on power: 'His strength was hardline clerics and Revolutionary Guards'

US President Donald Trump announced that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had been killed on the first day of a series of airstrikes by the US and Israel, a claim confirmed by Iranian state TV on Sunday morning.

The 86-year-old Iranian leader had been in power for three decades, one of the longest reigns in the world.

Since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Iran has had only two supreme leaders: Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The position carries all the power in Iran, with the supreme leader also being the head of state and commander of the armed forces, including the Revolutionary Guards.

Khamenei was not a complete dictator. He held a position in the center of power in Iran where he could veto government policies and even select candidates for government positions.

Iran’s younger generation has always viewed him as the leader.

Iran’s state media broadcasts Khamenei’s every move. His image is displayed on billboards in public places, while his pictures are displayed in shop

Iranian presidents have often made headlines abroad, but in Iran, Khamenei has been the real master of all affairs.

His death, in such violent circumstances, marks the beginning of a new and uncertain era for Iran and the entire region.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was born in 1939 into a religious family in the northeastern city of Mashhad, Iran. He was the second of his siblings, and his father was a middle-class Shiite cleric.

Khamenei romanticized his childhood as one of “piety despite poverty.” He often said that he had to live on dry bread.

Most of his education consisted of studying the Quran, and he qualified as a cleric at the age of 11. But like many other religious leaders of the time, his activities were as much spiritual as they were political.

Khamenei was an influential orator and became a critic of the Shah of Iran. The Shah was eventually deposed in the Islamic Revolution.

Ali Khamenei spent many years living in secret or in prison. The Shah’s secret police arrested him six times. During this time, he also endured violence and had to flee.

Khamenei prays in Tehran after the Iranian Revolution in 1979, Image source: Gamma-Ra

A year after the 1979 revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini appointed him as the imam of Friday prayers in Tehran.

His weekly political sermons were broadcast nationwide, cementing Khomeini’s position as a future leader.

In the early tumultuous months of the revolution, an incident occurred. Militant students loyal to Khomeini, who were studying at the university, seized the US embassy. Dozens of diplomats and staff were taken hostage.

The students were protesting the US decision to grant asylum to the deposed Shah. Iran’s revolutionary leadership, including Khamenei, supported the students.

American diplomats and staff were held hostage for 444 days.

The incident severely damaged the Carter administration in the United States and also set Iran on an anti-American and anti-Western path.

This incident laid the foundation for an international isolation for Iran that was to last for decades.

Shortly after, Khamenei narrowly escaped an assassination attempt.

In June 1981, a group of opponents planted a bomb inside a tape recorder that exploded during Khamenei's speech. The attack left him seriously injured, his lungs took months to fully recover, and his right arm was permanently disabled.

Later that year, Iranian President Mohammad Ali Rajaei was assassinated. The position of president in Iran is largely honorary, but Ali Khamenei also participated in the election to fill Ali Rajaei's seat.

Khomeini had the power to decide who could run, so the outcome was already clear. Khamenei won with 97 percent of the vote.

In his first speech, Khamenei made clear what his policy would be during his presidency.

Khamenei's right arm was permanently disabled after an assassination attempt in 1981, Image source: Ayatollah Khamenei

, Image caption: Khamenei after an assassination attempt in 1981

Khamenei faced a war after assuming the presidency.

A few months earlier, neighboring Iraq had invaded. Iraqi President Saddam Hussein feared that Khomeini's Islamic revolution could spread abroad and weaken his government.

This brutal and bloody war lasted for eight years, in which millions of people were killed on both sides.

Khamenei would be on the front lines for months. During this time, many of his comrades, commanders and soldiers whom Khamenei had met and known on the front lines were killed.

The Iraqi army used chemical weapons on Iranian border towns and fired missiles at distant cities, including the capital Tehran.

On the other hand, Iran used religiously inclined youth, some of whom were barely old enough to fight, to break through the Iraqi ranks. The casualties were heavy.

The war deepened Khamenei’s distrust of the United States and the West, which were supporting Saddam Hussein’s aggression.

 

Khomeini died in 1989 at the age of 86. The Supreme Leader’s Council, Iran’s council of religious scholars, then appointed Khamenei as Khomeini’s successor.

Khamenei was elected as Supreme Leader despite his perceived lack of religious knowledge.

In his first speech, he himself admitted: “I am a person with many weaknesses and shortcomings, and I am really a mediocre student.”

He added: “However, a responsibility has been placed on my shoulders, and I will use all my abilities, trusting in God, to fulfill this heavy responsibility.”

Khamenei became supreme leader after the death of Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989, Image source: Hulton Archive via Gett

Khamenei did not have the popularity of Khomeini, nor the support of the clerics. Therefore, he took very cautious steps to increase his power.

Over the next 30 years, a strong network of Khamenei loyalists was established in every important institution of the Iranian state, including parliament, the judiciary, the police, the media, and the religious elite.

Karim Sadjadpour, an analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, says the Supreme Leader’s power rested on “hardline clerics and wealthy Revolutionary Guards.”

Khamenei also cultivated a climate of personal devotion to himself to ensure public loyalty. He also continued to impose political repression and arbitrary arrests of opponents.

He rarely left the country and reportedly lived a modest life with his wife, six children, and their children in a compound in central Tehran.

He crushed all opposition within the country.

The 1999 student protests could have been a threat but were quashed.

A decade later, when a coup against alleged rigging of the presidential election took place, protesters were pepper-sprayed, beaten and shot.

When street protests erupted in 2019 over rising fuel prices, Khamenei shut down the internet for days to try to stop the demonstrations. Amnesty International alleges that police killed protesters with machine guns.

Khamenei may have lifted the restrictions on women’s education imposed by his predecessor, but he was no advocate for gender equality.

During his time, women campaigning against the hijab were arrested, tortured and held in solitary confinement. Their supporters were also targeted. A human rights lawyer was sentenced to 38 years in prison and 148 lashes.

One of the biggest challenges to the Islamic Revolution in 2022 was the death in police custody of Mahsa Amini, who was allegedly arrested for not wearing a headscarf.

According to human rights activists, security forces killed 550 people and arrested around 20,000 protesters in the protests that followed the killing.

Iran used Hezbollah, the armed Shiite organization based in Lebanon, as a proxy in its conflict with Israel.

Although it kept its people under the influence of slogans such as “Death to America,” its foreign policy was structured in such a way as to reach an agreement with the United States rather than direct confrontation.

The most divisive issue was the issue of nuclear weapons.

Twenty years ago, Khamenei declared that nuclear weapons were un-Islamic and issued a fatwa banning their production.

However, during his rule, Israel and Western countries became increasingly convinced that Iran was secretly trying to acquire the capability to produce nuclear weapons.

Based on this, world powers imposed severe sanctions. Once a major oil exporter, Iran was economically weakened by the sanctions. As a result, unemployment rose and public discontent also grew.

In 2015, a deal was reached that limited Iran’s nuclear activities in exchange for economic sanctions relief. Khamenei did not oppose the deal, but he did express doubts that the United States would stick to it in the lo

In 2018, US President Trump abandoned the nuclear deal and reimposed sanctions on Iran in an attempt to force it to sign a new deal.

Two years later, the US president ordered an airstrike in Iraq that killed Qassem Soleimani, a top general in Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and a close ally of the Supreme Leader. Khamenei vowed revenge and strengthened his ties with Russia and China.

When Israeli forces attacked Iran in June 2025, targeting its nuclear program, ballistic missile stockpiles, and top military commanders, Iran fired missiles toward Israeli cities.

 

When the US joined the war and attacked three of Iran’s key nuclear facilities, Khamenei vowed never to surrender. But for the first time in years, he appeared weak.

In January 2026, the Khamenei government faced widespread protests over Iran's deteriorating economic situation. The state responded with a harsh crackdown, in which at least 6,488 protesters were killed and 53,700 were arrested, according to human rights groups.

Over the next few weeks, Trump ordered an increase in the US military presence in the region and threatened to attack Iran if it did not agree to a new deal on its nuclear program and abandon what Trump called Iran's "dangerous nuclear ambitions."

But Khamenei flatly refused to stop uranium enrichment.

In late January 2026, he warned: "The Americans should know that if they start a war, this time it will spread to the entire region."

Khamenei has always maintained a firm grip on all centers of power in Iran, and has often shown ruthlessness in doing so.

At times, the Supreme Leader has tried to portray himself as above politics. He pretended to have nothing to do with the conflicts between Iran's reformists and conservatives. But in practice, Khamenei never allowed dissent to grow or policies he disagreed with to flourish.

Life in Iran today continues to follow the same rules he set. Few can say for sure who will succeed him, so no one knows what changes might occur in the future.