When Ali Khamenei was nominated by senior clerics to replace Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini as Iran’s supreme leader in 1989, he insisted he was underqualified.
Khamenei, who has died at the age of 86 after joint US-Israeli air strikes on Saturday, told the clerics of the Assembly of Experts that one had “to really weep for Islamic society” that he was even considered.
Yet Khamenei went on to become one of the longest-reigning leaders in Iran’s modern history, his initial modesty later replaced by a reluctance to relinquish power and a reliance on hardliners to maintain it.
A defining feature of his 37 years in charge was an Iranian foreign policy built on hostility towards the US and Israel, which reached such intensity that one reformist politician described it as “the core identity” of the regime.
His view of “the enemy” was partly shaped during the war between Iraq, which was backed by the west and the Gulf states, and Iran in the 1980s, during which he appeared in military uniform on the front lines. Once he took power in Tehran, he nurtured regional proxies, strengthening militant groups, exploiting conflicts and destabilising the region in an attempt to deter foreign aggression against Iran. He publicly boasted of financial and military support to Lebanese, Syrian, Palestinian, Iraqi and Yemeni militias.
As he pursued his hardline policies, international concerns grew over Iran’s nuclear programme and the risk that the country would develop nuclear weapons together with its ballistic missiles. Khamenei showed “heroic flexibility” — in his own words — by agreeing to Iran’s 2015 nuclear accord with major powers, trading near-total closure of the “peaceful” programme for sanctions relief.
When US President Donald Trump in 2018 withdrew Washington from the deal despite Iran’s compliance, citing Tehran’s funding of “terrorism”, Khamenei saw confirmation of his long-held belief that the US was untrustworthy. “The US’s problem is not about the nuclear programme, or missiles,” he said at the time. “Rather, they want to undermine our power base.”
New US sanctions followed, weighing heavily on the lives of Iranians by depriving the country of petrodollars and access to the international financial system.
Khamenei mostly blamed Iran’s presidents — elected every four years — for the country’s economic failures, arguing that more should be done to foster self-reliance, even though he was the ultimate decision maker on all key policies. One of his relatives said: “He was always against an influx of foreign investment into the country, for fear of foreign influence.”
Another relative said: “He told me, ‘I don’t want Iran to become another Malaysia. I just want a model in which not a single Iranian goes hungry.’”
But low growth and high inflation, along with political and social repression, fuelled dissent and pushed many below the poverty line. At the time of his death, at least a third of the country’s 90mn people were living in poverty, officials acknowledged.
His rule created a chasm between the regime and the public, and he increasingly came to embody an ageing theocracy seen as out of touch with reality, stubborn and resistant to meaningful change. As a result, protests grew more frequent and more violent, with Khamenei himself becoming the central target.
Anti-regime protests in 2009, 2017, 2019, 2022 and 2026 claimed thousands of lives and featured chants of “Death to Khamenei”, with each round of unrest further undermining the legitimacy of his rule.
In early 2026, in an attempt to justify Iran’s deadliest crackdown when security forces killed thousands of demonstrators, he recalled the country’s history, saying that hundreds of thousands of “the most noble men” had lost their lives to ensure the regime’s survival.
Yet since the early 2020s, a nation that saw itself as an important Middle Eastern power under Khamenei’s stewardship had gradually been losing its regional clout as tensions with the US intensified.
After the attack on Israel by Hamas on October 7 2023 triggered an upsurge in regional conflict, Israel struck back not only in Gaza but also against Iran and its regional surrogates, killing protégés such as Hassan Nasrallah, leader of Hizbollah in Lebanon, whom Khamenei regarded as a son.
Khamenei nevertheless refused to change Iran’s core policy of hostility to the west and Israel: a country that had begged others for missiles to fight Iraq in the 1980s now produced its own long-range missiles, some of which hit Israel after Israel attacked Iran in June 2025.
Survival of the Islamic Republic remained his overriding priority. In a move that set him apart from his predecessor, he elevated the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps into the country’s most powerful institution — militarily, politically and economically. That weakened traditional pillars of Iranian society, such as the clergy and the business community embodied in the bazaar, which had helped Khomeini secure victory over the shah in 1979.
When he died, his principal loyal force was the Guards, while many social and political factions had become alienated and the economy lay shattered, despite the country having spent hundreds of billions of dollars on his signature policies.
One western diplomat said Khamenei presided over a political system that was about trading rather than investment. “They traded away the country’s wealth,” the diplomat said.
Ali Khamenei was born in the holy city of Mashhad, northeastern Iran, on April 19, 1939.
He was raised in a respected but poor clerical family. He said they lived a “simple” life in a working-class neighbourhood, sharing one room and a damp basement, and endured nights when “there was no supper”.
At 19, he entered the Qom seminary, studying under senior clerics, including Khomeini. At 25, he returned to Mashhad and began holding gatherings where he cited the Koran to justify political Islam. His anti-shah and pro-Khomeini speeches led to at least nine periods of imprisonment and internal exile in deprived areas. There, he sought to help the poor and victims of natural disasters by collecting donations.
Khamenei slowly gained a reputation as an avant-garde cleric, breaking taboos by developing interests in music and modern Persian poetry, driving a Volkswagen and smoking a pipe.
Until his death, he retained a keen interest in arts and culture, according to the second relative. He read foreign and Iranian novels and historical works, and watched international films. His intellect earned respect even from opponents, who acknowledged he was cultured, knowledgeable and well-read. Critics, however, lamented his rigidity when he refused to allow other Iranians to make their own cultural choices.
“Before the revolution, Khamenei was known in Mashhad as a revolutionary with a modern tendency towards religious intellectualism,” said Mohammad Ali Abtahi, a cleric from the same city and a former vice-president. “After the revolution, however, he sided with the more conservative, traditional forces and distanced himself from moderate figures.”
Some outsiders saw him as even more politically rigid than his predecessor Khomeini. One western diplomat in Tehran said that whereas Khomeini famously conceded the need to drink from the “chalice of poison” when Iran signed a ceasefire to end the 1980s Gulf war with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, there was no evidence of Khamenei adopting any other aim than outright “victory” during his leadership.
Khamenei promoted an “Islamic lifestyle”, advocating early marriage, larger families and mandatory covering for women. But under pressure following the Woman, Life, Freedom movement in 2022, he did not stop President Masoud Pezeshkian from refusing to enforce compulsory hijab in the streets.
When Khamenei moved to Tehran shortly before the 1979 revolution, he was overshadowed by other clerics, such as Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, another former president and pillar of the revolution.
A gifted orator and shrewd politician, Khamenei won the trust of Khomeini, who described him as “among unique figures who are like the sun, radiating light”.
After serving as deputy defence minister, acting head of the revolutionary guards and a member of parliament, he was elected president in 1981 — barely three months after surviving an assassination attempt by the opposition Mujahedin-e Khalq that paralysed his right hand.
His first major test as supreme leader came in 1997, when Mohammad Khatami, a reformist cleric, won the presidency, promising political reform and improved foreign relations.
Tensions between Khatami, who served until 2005, and Khamenei as the supreme leader fuelled fierce infighting within the regime. The hardliners won, and a crackdown on reformists followed, including bans on running for national office.
The hardliners then backed Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad, but the move backfired for Khamenei when Ahmadi-Nejad turned against the supreme leader and demanded greater authority. Ahmadi-Nejad was followed by Hassan Rouhani, a centrist who pursued the nuclear accord and sought closer ties with the US, which only deepened the rivalries within the Iranian elite.
Ebrahim Raisi, a hardline president seen as a likely successor to Khamenei, died in a helicopter crash in 2024 under unclear circumstances. Pezeshkian, a reformist, was the last president to serve under Khamenei.
Khamenei never publicly addressed the matter of his succession and groomed no clear heir. Instead, his regime simply sidelined opponents. It is not clear whether the revolutionary guards on whom he depended will seek to preserve his legacy or follow another path.
Khamenei is survived by his wife, four clerical sons, one daughter and at least a dozen grandchildren.