In the wake of Israeli attacks since June 12, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader since 1989, was forced into hiding, retreating to an underground bunker to ensure his safety as the nation grappled with the fallout. This moment of vulnerability underscored the fragile balance of power he has maintained for decades, casting a long shadow over his life and legacy as a ruthless dictator. While his supporters praise his resilience in guiding Iran through turbulent times, critics view this retreat as emblematic of a leadership style shrouded in secrecy, insulated from the consequences of its hard-line policies.
With the death of Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989, Iran had a chance for a different leader, one concerned about national interests and the lives of everyday people. Unfortunately, we got a radical militant Islamist who only cared about creating an Islamic empire.
Like all strongmen, he believes that to achieve his goals, he can use any means necessary, including violence and terror, including using proxy militia groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah.
Seyyed Ali Hosseini Khamenei, known as Grand Ayatollah Khamenei and the second supreme leader, is an Islamic strongman. Like all Islamists, he wants an Islamic society with an Islamic government and ultimately a world dominated by Islam. And like all strongmen, he believes that to achieve his goals, he can use any means necessary, including violence and terror, including using proxy militia groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah.
Before the revolution and before he became president in 1981, Ayatollah Khamenei was often described as a spiteful, uncharismatic and power-hungry man. He was not the chosen successor of the first supreme leader. Still, when Khomeini died, there was some political jockeying, and Khamenei, a middle-rank member of the clergy, was quickly promoted to the higher rank of ayatollah and named the second supreme leader. The idea was that Khamenei would rule for ten years and then Khomeini’s son would take over. Many seminarians felt the whole process was illegitimate.
But Khamenei proved to be a strategist, sharply focused on maximizing his power. After the 1979 revolution, the Islamic Republic of Iran became a combination of republicanism—with elections and a distribution of power among the judiciary, the executive and the legislature—and a theocratic system that placed the supreme leader at the top of these three. According to the constitution, the supreme leader is the commander in chief of the armed forces, he is responsible for appointing the head of the judiciary, and he controls all state media as well as economic foundations. But that power wasn’t enough for Khamenei.
When he essentially became leader overnight, Khamenei realized that he didn’t have any social or political alliances. So, he started to personalize and indoctrinate the army and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). He tried to control all political blocs and undermine the republican side of the Islamic Republic. Anybody who was against his leadership was purged, including Khomeini’s son, who was killed a few years after Khamenei took power. He then set his sights on eliminating or silencing older clergy who had opposed his promotion, and he introduced a new generation of clergy who believed in him. Within a few years he became grand ayatollah, or marji’, the highest rank for Shia clerics.
From 1989 to 1999, the IRGC evolved into a quasi-personal army to the supreme leader. Today they don’t really care about Iran’s national interest or its political or territorial integrity. They are there to protect the regime and, more importantly, the leader. Elections are now just a show for the outside world to make it seem like Iran has a democratic system, and inside, they have become a competition to garner the love of the leader, to show who is more loyal to him.
While Khamenei’s rule remains unchallenged, he has a notable weakness: Among leaders in the modern world, he is one of the most disliked by his people.
In 2005, Khamenei supported Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to be president with the goal of making the bureaucracy completely loyal to him. The state bureaucracy had been made up mostly of university-educated and trained experts, who were much more challenging to indoctrinate than the Revolutionary Guard or the seminarians. Ahmadinejad, who aspired to become a strongman leader himself, was unable to achieve that goal. He and Khamenei gradually separated, and the personalization of the bureaucracy was delayed until Ayatollah Ebrahim Raisi became president in 2021. As soon as Raisi took office, most upper- and middle-level managers were purged. In personalizing his power, bringing in loyalists, and prioritizing religious commitment over technocratic expertise, Khamenei created a dumb state—an inefficient, incompetent bureaucracy unable to solve problems.
While Khamenei’s rule remains unchallenged, he has a notable weakness: Among leaders in the modern world, he is one of the most disliked by his people. Of course, he has support—every strongman must. Some of it is ideological, most is financially or materially motivated. But a good 90 percent of the Iranian people, in my opinion, don’t like him, including the political elite who are afraid of him. In Shi’ite Islam, we have a doctrine called dissimulation, or taqiyya, which holds that if your life is in danger, you can lie to protect yourself. Iranian people have learned this. So, say, if you want to get a job and somebody asks you, ‘Do you agree with Ayatollah Khamenei?’ You say, “Yes, he is the supreme leader.”
But based on statistics of the Islamic Republic (from a report that was leaked, after which the government had to acknowledge), 72 percent of the Iranian public believe that church and state should be separate (and because that’s coming from the state, you must assume the real number is higher). Those who are religious have a personalized understanding of Islam; they believe they can read the Quran by themselves. Meanwhile, secularism has grown. Of the 51 Muslim-majority countries, Iran is one of the least Islamic in terms of genuine public opinion. Look at the protests in 2022 sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini, who died in police custody after refusing to wear a hijab. Iranians attacked all the symbols of the Islamic and theocratic regime—they burned hijabs, burned the seminary school, burned the Quran and attacked the clergy.
When President Raisi went missing in a helicopter crash in May of 2024, some Iranians started to show their excitement on social media, saying things like, “If he’s dead, I’m going to post a nude selfie or start dancing.” The Islamic Republic later arrested 200 people in the city of Isfahan for showing too much excitement during Raisi’s funeral. Just imagine when Khamenei dies. I think Khamenei is also considering how people would celebrate. His demise is now a very real possibility.
As Khamenei nears the end of his rule, his legacy is defined solely by a grip on power maintained through fear, at the cost of devastating several generations of Iranian lives.
If Khamenei dies in an Israeli attack, who will be his successor if the regime survives? Constitutionally, there is an assembly of experts, 88 Grand Ayatollahs (all high-ranking clerical males), who will choose the next leader. Everybody is talking about Khamenei’s second son Mojtaba Khamenei. However, it is against Shi’a tradition to appoint the son immediately. The assembly can appoint an extremely elderly clergy member as an intermediary. And that’s scary, because Mojtaba Khamenei is as power hungry, as brutal, and as ideological as his father. All the policies his father designed and followed, including antisemitic, anti-American policies, will be followed by his son, Mojtaba. The window for change, the dream of many Iranians, seems to have opened with Israel’s attack on Iran but won’t stay that way for long.
Khamenei’s rule, spanning more than three decades, has been defined by relentless consolidation of power and a fanatical commitment to the revolutionary ideals of 1979. His legacy is marked by defiance of Western influence, support for regional proxies such as Hezbollah, and a sustained campaign of domestic repression paired with populist rhetoric. Under his leadership, Iran advanced its nuclear program, endured crushing sanctions and maintained an uneasy balance between hardliners and reformists. However, his refusal to implement meaningful reforms triggered mass unrest, from the 2009 Green Movement to the 2022 Mahsa Amini protests, leaving the nation deeply divided.
As Khamenei nears the end of his rule, his legacy is defined solely by a grip on power maintained through fear, at the cost of devastating several generations of Iranian lives.
Published originally on June 19, 2025.
