Small gestures sometimes said a lot: in appearances since 2021, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei increasingly spoke of the state as if it were himself. In late 2023 he even claimed God had spoken through him, recounting an occasion when he told Revolutionary Guard officers that “the almighty God has spoken” — adding that the words had come through his tongue and had a “significant impact.”
Khamenei, who presented himself as the “representative of God on Earth,” assumed the position of supreme leader in 1989 after the death of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, becoming Iran’s head of state for life. Born in 1939 in the Shiite holy city of Mashhad, he exercised the final say in state affairs for more than three decades. He avoided interviews and disliked public questioning; in 2018 a student was jailed for asking, on camera, whether the supreme leader could be asked questions at all.
Before the 1979 Islamic Revolution Khamenei was known as a poet and literary critic and was imprisoned several times for opposing the Shah. After the monarchy fell he rose quickly within the new theocratic system: he became an articulate Friday preacher in Tehran and survived a 1981 assassination attempt by the People’s Mujahideen that left his right hand paralyzed; he learned to write with his left hand and entered the inner circle of religious leadership. He served as president from 1981 to 1989, a period that included the devastating Iran–Iraq War (1980–1988).
Khamenei’s main pillar of power was the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), founded in 1979 to protect the revolution. Under his rule the IRGC expanded into a dominant force with land, naval and aerial branches, its own intelligence apparatus and overseas special units. It also controls parts of Iran’s economy — notably through construction conglomerate Khatam al-Anbiya — functioning as a state within a state and enabling the supreme leader to bypass the president and parliament.
Though he maintained a modest personal lifestyle, Khamenei presided over a system in which his associates often benefited from corruption. During the COVID-19 pandemic, a domestic vaccine project backed by his advisers consumed about $1 billion and failed to deliver; Khamenei publicly claimed the coronavirus was a US biological weapon and banned imports of vaccines from the US and UK, a stance blamed by many for worsening the pandemic’s toll in Iran.
Khamenei cast the Islamic Republic as the primary resistance to the “imperialist” West and repeatedly identified the United States as Iran’s chief enemy. He oversaw and endorsed Iran’s controversial nuclear and missile programs; although he issued a religious edict forbidding nuclear weapons, international observers doubted its constraining power. He only engaged in nuclear negotiations once Iran had developed enough know-how to quickly revive the program if needed.
His uncompromising posture brought international isolation and severe sanctions. Domestically, protests demanding greater political and social freedoms were often brutally suppressed, as were uprisings sparked by economic hardship. Repression of women increased, emigration of young professionals and academics soared, and hopes for reform within the system dimmed. As he aged, Khamenei became more insular and unforgiving, trusting a shrinking circle and showing little interest in dialogue with a dissatisfied population.
This article was originally written in German.