Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s spiritual leader and highest authority who led the country for almost four decades, was killed during US and Israeli air strikes on February 28 at the age of 86.
Praised by his supporters as a wise leader and denounced by his critics as a dictator, Khamenei will be remembered as a monumental figure of the Islamic Revolution who rode a reputation for piety and fierce devotion to the cause to his ascendancy as supreme leader.
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Khamenei’s use of force against his own people, jailing of opposition figures within the establishment itself, and fiery resistance to outside influence -- particularly that of the United States and Israel -- forged his legacy as a harsh and uncompromising authoritarian who led his country into international isolation.
“History will show Khamenei’s reign was deeply traumatic for the Iranian people who watched their country isolated and weakened to the point where a majority came to see emigration as their only hope,” said Alex Vatanka, director of the Iran Program at the Middle East Institute in Washington.
The latter years of Khamenei’s rule were marred by frequent nationwide antiestablishment protests and deadly state crackdowns that killed thousands of demonstrators.
The protests over the high cost of living in 2017, gasoline prices in 2019, water shortages in 2021, and the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, a young woman who allegedly violated the hijab law in 2022, reflected rising anti-regime sentiment in Iran.
But the deadliest protests against the Islamic republic came at the end of December 2025 and ran into early January 2026. The unrest was brutally suppressed, with rights groups confirming more than 7,000 deaths but warning that the real toll was likely much higher. Some estimates run as four times more than the confirmed total.
Khamenei never took responsibility for the rising dissent against his rule and instead blamed antiestablishment protests on foreign actors who he claimed wanted to weaken the Islamic republic.
Throughout his life, Khamenei showed a unique ability to play two sides.
Those who met him earlier in life remember him as a tall and slender cleric who loved poetry and literature, smoked a pipe, and was interested in talking to young people. That contrasts greatly with the fiery, bearded, anti-American who captured the world's attention later in life.
Under the watch of the once-open leader, repression thrived, Tehran's circle of insiders shrunk, and the Islamic republic became increasingly isolated.
For decades he had the ultimate say on virtually all affairs in Iran -- from whether women could ride bicycles in public to the course of the nation's relations with the United States, which he cast as the “Great Satan.”
Khamenei freely wielded his power over key institutions such as the judiciary, state broadcasting, and military. If he needed muscle, he relied on a military security apparatus that included the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) and Iran's feared intelligence services.
“By empowering the IRGC, he militarized the country’s politics and by co-opting the clerical establishment, he delegitimized it,” said Ali Vaez, the director of Iran Project at the International Crisis Group.
Born in Mashhad in 1939, Khamenei was the second son of a clerical father. He began his religious education early in life, was inspired in his early teens by fiery revolutionary Sayyid Navvab Safavi, and studied in the holy city of Qom under the future founder of the Islamic republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
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Ali Khamenei, Iran's Hard-Line Authoritarian Supreme Leader, Dead At 86
From Activist To Reviled Leader
Khamenei gained a reputation for being a humble and pious religious scholar, and in 1962 joined Khomeini's revolutionary movement, which opposed the shah and Tehran's pro-American policies. His revolutionary activism attracted the authorities' attention, leading to the first of many arrests and imprisonments.
In 1964, the 25-year-old Khamenei decided to leave Qom to care for his father -- a "good deed" that he later said was blessed by God and credited for his later success.
In Mashhad, Khamenei gave lessons on the Koran and Islamic ideology, leading to imprisonments, torture, and eventually internal exile. When the revolution occurred in 1979, he was named to the Islamic Revolutionary Council by his former teacher, Khomeini.
He would go on to hold several prominent positions within the clerical regime -- including two terms as president -- and survived an assassination attempt in 1981 that left his right hand paralyzed.
When Khomeini died in 1989 without an heir apparent, Khamenei was chosen to become Iran's second supreme leader by the Assembly of Experts, a clerical body.
The choice surprised many -- apparently even Khamenei himself.
“We should shed tears of blood wailing for the Islamic society that has been forced to even propose me [as supreme leader]," Khamenei famously said before his appointment.
“Unlike his predecessor who didn't fit into any specific political faction, Ayatollah Khamenei was the de facto leader of the conservative camp. He therefore lost the ability to sit above the fray and effectively manage the factional infighting,” Vaez said.
Throughout his reign, he would maintain an open defiance of the United States, which he claimed sought to overthrow the Islamic republic and restore a patron-client relationship with Tehran.
Under his watch, Iran grew its influence in the region through the so-called axis of resistance -- a loose-knit network of proxies, Tehran-backed militant groups, and allied state actors who play an important role in Iran's strategy to oppose the West, Arab foes, and its archrival, Israel.
But the network came undone after the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s government in Syria in 2024 and an Israeli campaign to decapitate Hezbollah in Lebanon, degrade Huthi capabilities in Yemen, and severely weaken Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
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Khamenei fell out with many of Iran’s presidents, who were then ostracized by the establishment.
The main exception was Ebrahim Raisi, a hard-line cleric who many believe was being groomed to succeed Khamenei as supreme leader. Raisi died in a helicopter crash in May 2024, complicating Khamenei’s succession plans.
The 88-member Assembly of Experts, dominated by conservative clerics, will now have to appoint a successor to Khamenei.
“He will be remembered as a man who had many opportunities to listen to his people and change course. But as supreme leader he was so set in his rigid ways, so determined to prevail over his domestic and foreign rivals, and deep down so insecure that he never really opted for any serious introspection,” Vatanka said.
Khamenei is survived by four sons, one daughter, and his wife. A second daughter reportedly died in the same US and Israeli strikes that killed Khamenei.