Ali Khamenei

Seyyed Ali Hosseini Khamenei (, ; born 19 April 1939) is an Iranian Twelver Shia marja' and politician who has been the second supreme leader of Iran since 1989.

Then, he went to Najaf in 1957, but soon returned to Mashhad due to his father's unwillingness to let him stay there.

In 1958, he settled in Qom where he attended the classes of Seyyed Hossein Borujerdi and Ruhollah Khomeini.

Like many other politically active clerics at the time, Khamenei was far more involved with politics than religious scholarship.

Khamenei was a key figure in the Iranian Revolution in Iran and a close confidant of Ruhollah Khomeini.

Since the founding of the Islamic Republic, Khamenei has held many government posts.

Muhammad Sahimi claims that his political career began after the Iranian Revolution, when the former President of Iran, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, then a confidant of Khomeini, brought Khamenei into Khomeini's inner circle.

Later on, Hassan Rouhani, then a member of Parliament, arranged for Khamenei to get his first major post in the provisional revolutionary government as deputy defense minister.

Khamenei has been head of the servants of Astan Quds Razavi since 14 April 1979.

As supreme leader, Khamenei is the most powerful political authority in the Islamic Republic.

He is the head of state of Iran, the commander-in-chief of its armed forces, and can issue decrees and make the final decisions on the main policies of the government in many fields such as economy, the environment, foreign policy, and national planning in Iran.

As supreme leader, Khamenei has either direct or indirect control over the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government, as well as the military and media.

All candidates for the Assembly of Experts, the presidency and the Majlis (Parliament) are vetted by the Guardian Council, whose members are selected directly or indirectly by the Supreme Leader of Iran.

There have also been instances when the Guardian Council reversed its ban on particular people after being ordered to do so by Khamenei.

He was briefly the vice Minister of National Defence from late July to 6 November 1979 and as a supervisor of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards.

He also went to the battlefield as a representative of the parliament's defense commission.

Khamenei narrowly escaped an assassination attempt by the Mujahedin-e Khalq when a bomb, concealed in a tape recorder, exploded beside him.

Khamenei was one of Iran's leaders during the Iran–Iraq War in the 1980s, and developed close ties with the now powerful Revolutionary Guards which he controls, and whose commanders are elected and dismissed by him.

The Revolutionary Guards have been deployed to suppress opposition to him.

Khomeini appointed Khamenei to the post of Tehran's Friday prayers Imam in 1980, after the resignation of Hussein-Ali Montazeri from the post.

He previously served as third president of Iran from 1981 to 1989.

Khamenei is the longest-serving head of state in the Middle East, as well as the second-longest-serving Iranian leader of the last century, after Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.

According to his official website, Khamenei was arrested six times before being sent into exile for three years during Mohammad Reza Pahlavi's reign.

After the Iranian revolution overthrowing the shah, he was the target of an attempted assassination in June 1981 that paralyzed his right arm.

Khamenei served as the third president of Iran from 1981 to 1989, while becoming a close ally of the first supreme leader, Ruhollah Khomeini.

Shortly before his death, Khomeini had a disagreement with the heir he had chosen – Hussein Ali Montazeri – so there was no agreed-on successor when Khomeini died.

On 27 June 1981, while Khamenei had returned from the frontline, he went to the Aboozar Mosque according to his Saturday's schedule.

The Assembly of Experts elected Khamenei as the next supreme leader on 4 June 1989, at age 50.

According to Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, Khamenei was the man Khomeini had chosen as his successor before dying.

There have been major protests during Khamenei's reign, including the 1994 Qazvin protests, the 1999 student protests, the 2009 presidential election protests, the 2011–12 protests, the 2017–18 protests, the 2018–19 general strikes and protests, the 2019–20 protests, the 2021–22 protests, and the Mahsa Amini protests.

Journalists, bloggers and others have been imprisoned in Iran for insulting Supreme Leader Khamenei, often in conjunction with blasphemy charges.

Their sentences have included lashing and jail time; some have died in custody.

Regarding the nuclear program of Iran, Khamenei issued a fatwa in 2003 forbidding the production, stockpiling and use of all kinds of weapons of mass destruction.

Born to Seyed Javad Khamenei, an Alim and Mujtahid born in Najaf, and Khadijeh Mirdamadi (daughter of Hashem Mirdamadi) in Mashhad, Khamenei is the second of eight children.

Two of his brothers are also clerics; his younger brother, Hadi Khamenei, is a newspaper editor and cleric.

His elder sister Fatemeh Hosseini Khamenei died in 2015, aged 89.

His father was an ethnic Azerbaijani from Khamaneh, while his mother was an ethnic Persian from Yazd.

Some of his ancestors are from Tafresh in today's Markazi Province and migrated from their original home in Tafresh to Khamaneh near Tabriz.

Khamenei's great ancestor was Sayyid Hossein Tafreshi, a descendant of the Aftasi Sayyids, whose lineage supposedly reached to Sultan ul-Ulama Ahmad, known as Sultan Sayyid, a grandchild of Shia fourth Imam, Ali ibn Husayn.

Khamenei's education began at the age of four, by learning Quran at Maktab; he spent his basic and advanced levels of seminary studies at the hawza of Mashhad, under mentors such as Sheikh Hashem Qazvini and Ayatollah Milani.