Ali Khamenehi

1939 -

Leader (rahbar) of the Islamic Republic of Iran and successor to the constitutional functions of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

Born in the northeastern Iranian city of Mashhad, Khamenehi began his advanced studies in Islam in 1958, with a year's attendance at courses on Islamic jurisprudence in al-Najaf, Iraq. He received most of his training in Qom, where he studied with ayatollahs Damad, Haeri, Tabatabai, and most importantly Khomeini.

During the uprising in Iran of June 1963, inspired by Khomeini, Khamenehi acted as liaison between Qom and his native city of Mashhad; he was jailed twice for this in 1964. Released in 1965, he resumed propagating the revolutionary vision of Khomeini in Mashhad while teaching the Qurʾan and Islamic law. These activities earned him further periods of imprisonment as well as banishment in 1968, 1971, 1972, 1975, and 1978. After the Iranian Revolution in February 1979, Khamenehi emerged as a key figure in the elite of clerical activists who founded the Islamic Republican Party and came to dominate the Iranian parliament during its first postrevolutionary term. In July 1979 he was appointed undersecretary for defense in the Mehdi Bazargan cabinet, becoming acting minister of defense after Bazargan's resignation.

Among the most determined opponents of Abolhasan Bani Sadr, the first president of the Islamic republic, Khamenehi played an important role in the events leading to his dismissal in June 1981. On 27 June, while delivering the Friday sermon at Tehran University, Khamenehi was injured in one
of the numerous assassinations of leading government figures that followed the disgracing of Bani Sadr. When Mohammad Ali Rajai, the next president, was assassinated in August 1981, Khamenehi was appointed head of the Islamic Republican Party. On 2 October 1981, he was elected president of the Islamic Republic. He also served as deputy minister of defense and commander of the Revolutionary Guards. Khomeini appointed him in 1980 to be the leader of the Friday congregational prayers in Tehran. He was also elected as a deputy of the Islamic Consultative Assembly (Majles) in the same year. He was elected for a second term as president, with an overwhelming majority, on 16 August 1985.

After the death of Khomeini on 4 June 1989, Khamenehi was swiftly chosen as his successor, despite his lack of seniority in the learned hierarchy of Iranian Shiʿism; this choice received popular ratification in August 1989, when the modifications to the constitution were approved. For example, because of Khamenehi's policies regarding the freedom of the press (he has approved the judiciary's shutdown of more than 100 reformist newspapers) he and the conservatives have come to be known as "hard-liners" in most Western political writings. Khamenehi continues to hold an important place in the leadership of the Islamic Republic and has followers outside Iran, as witnessed in the many Web sites dedicated to his teachings and speeches.

Bibliography

Bakhash, Shaul. The Reign of the Ayatollahs: Iran and the IslamicRevolution. New York: Basic Books, 1984.

— HAMID ALGAR
UPDATED BY ROXANNE VARZI