Ali Hosseini Khamenei was the Grand Ayatollah of Iran.
Born on July 17, 1939, he is the Supreme Leader of Iran and a Telver Shi’a marja. From 1981 to 1989, he served as the country’s president. In 2010, Forbes listed Khamenei as among the “World’s Most Powerful People” and Time named him one of the “Time 100” in 2007.
Reportedly, one of only three individuals with significant power in the Islamic Republic, Khamenei holds absolute power in his country. In June 1981, an assassination attempt paralyzed his right arm. In June 2009, the mass protests following the presidential elections led to a falling-out between him and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. During his decades in power, Khamenei steadily consolidated authority over Iran’s political system and security institutions, becoming the country’s ultimate decision-maker on major policy matters and tightening his grip on power over successive governments.
Khamenei was a key figure in the 1979 Islamic Revolution and a close confidant of Ayatollah Khomeini. He was elected president of Iran after the 1981 assassination of Mohammad-Ali Rajai in a landslide vote and became the first cleric to serve in the Iranian presidency. In his inaugural address as president, he promised to eradicate “deviation, liberalism, and American-influenced leftists.” As supreme leader, he pursued an ideological foreign policy that was deeply hostile to the United States and Israel and sought to build Iran into a regional power capable of challenging U.S. influence and rival Sunni states across the Persian Gulf.
Regarding his leadership, Khamenei issued a fatwa (or a religious prohibition) against any insult to the companions or wives of Muhammad. Allegedly, he issued a fatwa that the production, stockpiling, and use of nuclear weapons are forbidden according to Islam, but this has been hotly debated. The Iranians have never issued such a Fatwa, and multiple investigations have yielded no concrete evidence of it.
In 2000, Khamenei was listed by the Committee to Protect Journalists as “one of the top ten enemies of the press and freedom of expression.” Under his leadership, countless reporters have been arrested and interrogated for unclear and unproven charges. His rule also relied heavily on a powerful security apparatus, including the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the Basij paramilitary force, which have been used repeatedly to suppress domestic dissent and quell popular protests.
Security forces under the authority of the regime violently crushed demonstrations following the disputed 2009 presidential election and later cracked down on nationwide protests, including those sparked in 2022 after the death of Mahsa Amini while in police custody.
Among his many government posts not already mentioned are chairman of the High Council of Revolution Culture Affairs (1982); President of the Expediency Council (1988); and Chairman of the Constitutional Revisal Committee (1989). During his tenure as supreme leader, Iran invested billions of dollars through the Revolutionary Guards to support and arm allied militias across the Middle East, including groups in Lebanon, Iraq, and Yemen, as part of a regional network often described as an “axis of resistance” opposing the United States and Israel.
In February 2026, Khamenei was killed in a coordinated U.S.–Israeli strike on a leadership compound in central Tehran after the C.I.A., which had tracked him for months, obtained high-fidelity intelligence that he would attend a Saturday morning meeting of senior Iranian political and security officials. Acting on that intelligence, Washington and Jerusalem adjusted the timing of a preplanned operation to take advantage of the opportunity. Long-range precision munitions struck multiple locations within the compound, where top defense and intelligence figures had gathered; Khamenei was in a nearby building at the time of impact. The strike, described by officials as achieving “tactical surprise,” followed months of joint intelligence preparation, including lessons drawn from last year’s 12-day war that improved tracking of the supreme leader’s movements.
Sources: “Ali Khamenei,” Britannica.
“Iranian supreme leader Khamenei has been implacable opponent of US and Israel,” Reuters, (June 17, 2025).
Julian Barnes, Ronen Bergman, Eric Schmitt, Tyler Pager, “The C.I.A. Helped Pinpoint a Gathering of Iranian Leaders. Then Israel Struck.,” New York Times, (March 1, 2026).