Profile || At the top of the Islamic Republic since 1989, Khamenei is more than a mere religious leader: it is the symbol of a regime that, between orthodoxy and pragmatism, challenges the western world and fights its own internal contradictions. Understanding Khamenei is to realize the post-revolutionary Iran, its certainties and its cracks
He was born in one of the sacred cities of Iran, Mashhad, in the Northeast, in 1939.
Ali Hosseini Khamenei, now 86, grew up in an environment where religion was the fulcrum of social and political life. From an early age he frequented his ghosts and showed aptitude for Shiite religious studies, inserting himself in a tradition that fuses faith and power – or power and faith; The order here matters.
It was a time marked by the dominion of Shah Reza Pahlavi and the repression of the clergy – which would become the engine of the revolution that would change the country forever and even now. Khamenei emerged in a boiling scenario, in which Iran oscillated between authoritarian modernization and popular revolt.
He actively participated in the movements against the Shah regime, along with figures such as Ruhollah Khomeini, who in 1979 would become the leader of the Islamic Revolution and Iran’s first supreme leader. Khamenei’s rise in Iran-New was neither immediate nor inevitable. Before becoming a supreme leader, he was president of the country between 1981 and 1989, a difficult period, marked by the devastating war against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq – as well as internal tensions that threatened the regime’s own survival.
Still, his reputation has consolidated himself as a hard-line but pragmatic man capable of sailing the turbulent waters of Iranian politics.
With the death of Khomeini in 1989, Khamenei was chosen to succeed him, a decision that surprised many, given his less “prestigious” origin in the clergy and the lack of the traditional title of Aiatola. But it was precisely its less charismatic, perhaps, and more disciplined profile that certainly seduced the Guardian Council, in a context in which the regime wanted stability, continuity and, more than anything, rigid control.
As a supreme leader, Khamenei’s power is practically absolute.
It is he, before, as now, who controls the Armed Forces, including the revolutionary guard, the judicial system, the media State, and has the final word on all the political and religious decisions of the country. In addition to the president -elect, a secondary actor in the hierarchy of power and acting more as a head of government, Khamenei embodies the maximum authority, in a theocracy where religious power overlaps with any other form of legitimacy.
This absolute power has been exercised in a logic of resistance and confrontation, especially with the United States, the country to whom Khamenei accuses of wanting to “crush the revolution” and subvert the country.
Since 1979, Iran has lived in a state of permanent antagonism with Washington, who was president in America, an antagonism aggravated by the US withdrawal from the nuclear agreement in 2018 – which marked a new climb of tensions, with Khamenei reaffirming the rejection of any negotiation that is not done “with dignity” – and the hardening of economic sanctions and diplomatic insulation.
For Khamenei, all are attempts to “economic war” and “cultural invasion” – which require a firm response and without any concessions. His speech appeals to popular resistance (and Khamenei personifies this “resistance”) and the construction of a “regional resistance axis” – involving allies such as Hezbollah and Shiite militias in various Arab countries.
The relationship with Israel is even more loaded. For Khamenei, the Hebrew state is an “illegitimate” entity, an “Zionist enemy” that occupies Palestinian lands and with whom I will be in unlavod war, as it represents an existential threat to Iran and therefore to the Islamic cause.
Khamenei’s speeches against Israel are loaded with moral condemnation and political condemnation. And Iranian support to groups such as Hezbollah in Lebanon or Shiite militias in Iraq and Syria is an integral part of this regional resistance strategy, a strategy to confront Israel for “power of attorney.”
Although the most aggressive rhetoric has been a bit publicly softened in recent years – and completely “imploded” in the latest weeks: now, yes, it is a war, not symbolic but warred – official discourse maintains the denial of Israel’s right to exist and the promise of resistance. This posture feeds the regional conflict and complicates any attempted lasting peace in the Middle East.
But the Iran of Khamenei cannot only see from the inside out; It is also a country in increasing internal tension.
Despite anto -writer rhetoric and the diplomatic and military victories that the regime complains, economic and social reality is tough for most Iranians. Galloping inflation, high unemployment, corruption (larger in high spheres) and political repression have generated increasingly frequent protests – mainly mainly by young people (urban) who feel that the revolution model does not correspond to their aspirations. The demonstrations, which have been growing since 2017, demand more freedom, rights and political change, confronting a regime that responds with violent repression.
For Khamenei, these protests are often seen as attempts at outer destabilization, associated with “foreign infiltration”. Its rigid control over the security device aims to stifle the dissent and keep the regime intact. And you have done it.
It is therefore in this context, internal and external, that the figure of Khamenei becomes even more complex. It is that their age already advanced and the lack of clear succession (nor consensus there are among the Iranian elites) feed uncertainties in the regime. But his hand, or firm fist, still keeps the country in a kind of unstable balance, where theocracy and political pragmatism mingle to ensure the survival of the Islamic Republic.
More than a religious leader, Khamenei is today the symbol of a revolution that refuses to be forgotten but faces the ghosts of time and faces change.
Its Iran is a country that looks to the future with suspicion, clinging to the revolutionary past, in a crossroads that will have to decide whether to end its confrontation logic (as now, with Israel and possibly the United States) or its way to a new era. Khamenei will never allow a new era.
To understand there Khamenei is to understand an architecture that is based on the fusion of religious authority with political legitimacy, a theocracy that legitimizes its power in the name of protecting the Islamic Revolution and Shiite Values. Understanding there Khamenei is understanding a system guardian: a leader who managed to keep the system intact but at the expense of isolation and hardening.
Understanding there Khamenei is understanding that Iran is not only a regional power with aggressive policies, but also a deeply divided country, marked by leadership that has immense power and increasingly contested legitimacy.
