On February 28, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was killed in a joint operation by the United States and Israel. According to sources within the intelligence services of both countries, Israeli aircraft struck a building in Tehran where a meeting with the country’s top military leaders was taking place. All participants in the meeting were killed. Khamenei was 86 years old.
He had held the position of rahbar, the supreme religious and political leader of Iran, since 1989, following the death of the founder of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. With nearly 37 years in power, Khamenei was one of the longest-ruling authoritarian leaders in the modern world.
From a cleric’s son to a revolutionary
Ali Khamenei was born in 1939 in Mashhad, a major religious center in northeastern Iran. His family belonged to the Shiite clergy of Azerbaijani origin. In the late 1950s he went to study in the religious schools of Qom, the country’s main theological center.
One of his teachers was Ruhollah Khomeini, the future leader of the Islamic Revolution. The young Khamenei quickly became involved in clandestine political activity against the regime of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Like many Islamist revolutionaries of his generation, he combined religious convictions with anti-imperialism and political Islam.
During this period he translated into Persian several works by Sayyid Qutb, the Egyptian thinker and ideologue of the Muslim Brotherhood. Because of his political activities he was arrested several times and spent several years in internal exile in Iranshahr, in southeastern Iran.
The revolution and rapid rise
After the Islamic Revolution of 1979, which overthrew the Pahlavi monarchy, Khamenei was among the young figures who rose quickly within the new political system. His rapprochement with Khomeini was facilitated by the support of influential revolutionary leaders, particularly Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.
The first years of the Islamic Republic were marked by intense internal conflict. Armed opposition groups attempted to assassinate several officials of the new regime. In 1981 Khamenei was seriously injured when a bomb hidden in a tape recorder exploded during a sermon at the Abu Zar mosque in Tehran.
Two months later another attack killed Iranian president Mohammad Ali Rajai and prime minister Mohammad Javad Bahonar. Khamenei then won the early presidential election with 97 percent of the vote, even though he spent much of the campaign recovering in hospital from his injuries. He thus became the first cleric to hold the presidency of the Islamic Republic.
A president during war
Khamenei’s presidency coincided with one of the most dramatic periods in Iran’s modern history: the Iran-Iraq war (1980–1988). Saddam Hussein attacked Iran shortly after the revolution, hoping to exploit the chaos and seize the oil-rich province of Khuzestan.
Iran managed to halt the invasion and gradually moved to a counteroffensive. The country’s leadership considered marching on Baghdad and overthrowing Saddam Hussein.
But the war became extremely costly. According to several accounts, it was Khamenei who persuaded Khomeini to accept a ceasefire in 1988. The ayatollah later described that decision as “drinking a cup of poison.”
An unexpected successor
When Khomeini died in June 1989, Khamenei was not considered the obvious successor. He lacked the highest level of religious authority normally required for the position of Supreme Leader.
However, Iran’s elite was looking for a compromise figure. The main advocate of his candidacy was Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, then the speaker of parliament.
To allow Khamenei’s appointment, the constitution was amended and the requirement that the Supreme Leader hold the highest theological rank was removed. Many observers believed he would be a transitional figure. Instead, he remained in power for nearly forty years.
A system of political balancing
Unlike Khomeini, Khamenei did not possess the charisma of a revolutionary leader. His power rested on alliances and careful political maneuvering.
For many years Iran’s political system functioned as a form of alternation between conservatives and reformists. After the conservative Rafsanjani came the reformist Mohammad Khatami, followed by the conservative Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, then the reformist Hassan Rouhani, and finally the conservative Ebrahim Raisi.
This system helped maintain a balance between different factions of the elite and various social groups, while strategic decisions remained concentrated in the hands of the Supreme Leader.
The rise of the Revolutionary Guards
Under Khamenei, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) became one of the central pillars of the regime. Over time it evolved into a major military, political, and economic force, controlling a significant share of Iran’s economy. Its size grew to around 200,000 members. Its commanders were chosen from figures personally trusted by the Supreme Leader.
The nuclear strategy
One of Khamenei’s most important strategic decisions concerned the development of Iran’s nuclear program. After the revelation in 2002 of nuclear facilities in Natanz and Arak, Iran found itself at the center of an international crisis.
Tehran insisted that its program was purely civilian. In practice, however, Iran’s strategy aimed at achieving nuclear threshold status, not possessing nuclear weapons formally, but having the capability to produce them quickly if necessary. This policy led to prolonged confrontation with Western powers and severe economic sanctions.
The end of political balance
The turning point came in 2009, when the presidential election won by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad triggered a wave of protests. Reformist candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi and his supporters accused the authorities of massive electoral fraud. The demonstrations were violently suppressed. After that episode, Iran’s political system gradually shifted toward a more openly authoritarian model.
The final years
In the later years of Khamenei’s rule, Iran increasingly relied on security structures. The economy suffered heavily under sanctions, with high inflation, rapid currency depreciation, and growing social discontent.
Protests erupted regularly.
At the beginning of 2026, a new wave of large-scale demonstrations shook the country. The repression was extremely brutal. According to human rights organizations, several thousand people were killed within a few days.
The final confrontation
By the end of February, the United States had deployed in the Middle East a military force comparable to the one used during the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Despite mounting pressure, Khamenei refused to make concessions on Iran’s nuclear or regional policies.
On February 28, the war began.
One of its first victims was the man who had shaped the trajectory of the Islamic Republic for nearly four decades.
