When he appeared in public for the first time in five years last October, Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Hosseini Khamenei, sent an uncompromising message: "Israel will not last long," he said in front of tens of thousands of his supporters in a mosque in Tehran, during Friday prayers.
"We must stand against the enemy with unwavering faith," emphasized the 86-year-old leader, a few days after the assassination of his close ally Hassan Nasrallah by Israeli strikes on Hezbollah's headquarters in Beirut.
The loss of Nasrallah was a personal blow to Khamenei – and the Israeli airstrike on Iran that followed (last Friday) a new strategic humiliation. Tehran responded with a barrage of missiles and drones towards Tel Aviv, but Israel’s attacks continue unabated. Iranian air defenses are proving inadequate, and the network of Islamist militias that Khamenei had been building for decades has effectively collapsed.
He now has few good options – a situation that this cautious, realistic, conservative and ruthless revolutionary always tried to avoid.
From Mashhad to power
Born in Mashhad, to a humble family of a low-ranking cleric, Khamenei took his first steps as a radical in the feverish atmosphere of the early 1960s. The then Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi had embarked on a major reform program that was largely rejected by the country's conservative clergy. Khamenei studied religion in Qom and was inspired by Ayatollah Khomeini, embracing the traditions of Shiite Islam. By the end of the decade, he was carrying out secret missions on behalf of the now exiled leader and forming Islamist resistance networks.
Alongside his Islamic studies, the young Khamenei reads Western literature – Tolstoy, Hugo, Steinbeck, meets thinkers who sought to merge Marxism and Islamism to create new ideologies, and is fascinated by anti-colonial movements and the discourse of the Egyptian Islamist Sayyid Qutb, whom he translates into Farsi.
How he came to the helm of the Islamic Republic
Repeatedly imprisoned, he participated in the revolutionary demonstrations of 1978 and was elected president in 1981, after an assassination attempt that left him with a paralyzed right arm. When Khomeini died in 1989, Khamenei succeeded him – with a constitutional amendment – and amassed unprecedented powers for the Islamic Republic.
Its central arm is the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC), but it maintains multiple networks of influence and loyalty in neighboring countries. By the late 90s, it had eliminated opponents and strengthened the regime's hard core. The writers it once admired were persecuted. Dissidents abroad were assassinated.
The axis of resistance and the "minefield" of compromises
Despite the election of reformists to the presidency, such as Mohammad Khatami in 1997, who had some freedom of action, Khamenei does not allow for substantial changes. He allows timid overtures, such as the rapprochement with the United States (through Khatami) after September 11, but he never deviates from his basic principle: protecting the revolution and the theocratic regime. In this context, he also supported the Guards' efforts to exhaust American forces in Iraq after their invasion in 2003 and to expand Iranian influence in the neighboring country.
Furthermore, it invested in the strategy of proxies: Hezbollah, Hamas, Houthis, and Shiite militias in Syria and Iraq, all of whom formed the so-called “axis of resistance.” But after the Israeli attacks and the fall of the Assad regime in Syria, the edifice collapsed.
Economy, repression and isolation
Khamenei faces ongoing popular uprisings, which he suppresses with an iron fist. At the same time, the economy is sinking, while women, LGBTQ+ people and religious minorities are constantly persecuted. He projects an image of humility, living in a house on Tehran's Palestine Street, although the authenticity of his ascetic life is questioned.
Is the end of his era approaching?
For more than 35 years, Khamenei has methodically navigated between enemies and internal rivals, avoiding war and ensuring the survival of the regime. But today, he is faced with his greatest challenge: old, isolated and weakened, he is looking for a way out where there may be none. The debate over his succession has already begun – and with it, perhaps the final chapter of an era that has marked the Middle East.
Source: protothema.gr
