Ali Khamenei

Born to an Iranian Azeri^[2] family in Mashhad,^[3][1] Ali Khamenei began religious studies before completing elementary education. The son of a cleric,^[4] he is second eldest of eight children, and two of his brothers are also clerics. His younger brother, Hadi Khamenei, is a notable newspaper editor and cleric.^[5]

He attended the seminary classes of "Sat'h" and "Kharej" in the hawza of Mashhad, under his mentors such as Haj Sheikh Hashem Qazvini, and Ayatollah Milani, and then went to Najaf in 1957.^[6] After a short stay he left Najaf to Mashhad, and in 1958 he settled in Qom. Khamenei attended the classes of Ayatollahs Husain Borujerdi and Ruhollah Khomeini. Later, he was involved in the Islamic activities of 1963 which led to his arrest in the city of Birjand, in Southern Khorasan Province. After a short period he was released and continued his life by teaching in religious schools of Mashhad and holding Nahaj-ul-Balagheh lesson sessions in different mosques.^[6]

Ali Khamenei was not a marja when he was elected the Supreme Leader of Iran.^[7] Since the Constitution of Islamic Republic of Iran required the Supreme Leader to be a marja, a new amendment to the constitution to allow a cleric of his then-status to be elected as the Supreme Leader was required. Since this had not been put to a referendum yet, the Assembly of Experts internally titled him a temporary office holder until the new constitution became effective. The choice of Khamenei, who was soon after addressed as Ayatollah but whose marja'iyat was not recognized at the time, is said to be a political one.^[8] In 1994, after the death of Grand Ayatollah Mohammad Ali Araki, the Society of Seminary Teachers of Qom declared Khamenei a new marja. However, four of the Iran's dissident Grand Ayatollahs declined to recognize Khamenei as a marja.^[9] Nevertheless, a cleric only needs acceptance of a few Grand Ayatollahs, to be recognized as marja.^[10] Khamenei refused the offer of marja'iyat for Iran, as he explained, due to other heavy responsibilities, but agreeing to be the marja for the Shi'as outside of Iran. His acceptance of marja'iyat for Shi'as outside Iran does not have traditional precedence in Shi'ism. Marja'iyat can be, and in modern times it increasingly is, transitional.^[8]

Theoretically, the Islamic republic system (vilayat-i faqih, leadership of the supreme jurisprudent) is said to be legitimate when a Grand Ayatollah who is recognized as a marja serves as the faqih (jurisprudent). Grand Ayatollah Mohammad Shirazi, who was under house-arrest at the time for his opposition to Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, did not accept Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as a marja. According to "Human Rights in Iran" (2001) by Pace University's Reza Afshari, Shirazi was "indignant" over recognition of Khamenei as the Supreme Leader and a marja. Shirazi (who died in late 2001) apparently favored a committee of Grand Ayatollahs to lead the country. Other marjas who questioned the legitimacy of Khamenei's marja'yat were dissident clerics: Grand Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri, Grand Ayatollah Hassan Tabatabai-Qomi and Grand Ayatollah Yasubedin Rastegari.^[9]

Khamenei was a key figure in the Islamic revolution in Iran and a close confidant of Ayatollah Khomeini.

Like many other politically active clerics at the time, Khamenei was far more involved with politics than religious scholarship. At this time he was a leftist by temperament. He also translated into Persian the works of the Egyptian extremist theoretician Sayyid Qutb, the Sunni intellectual whose radicalism inspired Al Qaeda and other terrorist and Islamist groups.^[4]

Khomeini appointed Khamenei to the post of Tehran's Friday Prayer Leader in the autumn of 1979, after the resignation of Grand Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri from the post. Also he went to battlefield as a representative of defense commission of the parliament. In June 1981, Khamenei narrowly escaped an assassination attempt when a bomb, concealed in a tape recorder at a press conference, exploded beside him. He was permanently injured, losing the use of his right arm,^[4] but the event helped affirm his reputation as a "living martyr" among his followers.^{[citation needed]}

In 1981, after the assassination of Mohammad Ali Rajai, Ayatollah Khamenei was elected President of Iran by a landslide vote in the Iranian presidential election, October 1981 and became the first cleric to serve in the office. Ayatollah Khomeini had originally wanted to keep clerics out of the presidency, but this view was compromised. Many saw Khamenei's presidency as a sign that Islamic modernists were being isolated by the Supreme Leader and that the Islamic revolution was embracing more fully the concept of Vilayat-e Faqih or Guardianship of the Jurists.^{[citation needed]}

Violent political opposition to the regime, including assassinations, guerilla activity and insurrections, were answered by state repression and terror in the early 1980s, both before and during Khamenei's presidency, when thousands of rank-and-file members of insurgent groups were executed, often by revolutionary courts. By 1982, the government announced that the courts would be reined in, although various political groups were repressed by the government in the first half of the decade.^[11]

Khamenei helped lead the country during the long, bloody Iraq-Iran War in the 1980s, and developed close ties with the now-powerful Revolutionary Guards. As president, he had a reputation as a policy wonk deeply interested in military matters, budgets and administrative details.^[4]

He was re-elected to a second term in 1985, capturing 85.66% of total votes.^[12] As a close ally of Khomeini, he rarely clashed with the Supreme Leader during his term in office, unlike Iran's first president, Abolhassan Banisadr.^{[citation needed]}

Seyyed Ali Khamene'i was preceded by Ayatollah Khomeini, the leader of Islamic Revolution in Iran. When Khomeini died, Khamenei was elected as the new Supreme Leader by the Assembly of Experts on June 4, 1989. Initially, a council of three members, "Ali Meshkini, Mousavi Ardabili and Khamenei", was proposed for Leadership. After rejection of a Leadership Council by the assembly, and lack of votes for Grand Ayatollah Mohammad Reza Golpaygani, Khamenei became the Supreme Leader by two third of the votes.^[13]

Electing an Islamic leader superior to all national and lawful organs is called Velayat e Faqih, first stated by Ayatollah Naraqi and expanded and revised by Ayatollah Khomeini. In this kind of leadership every decision is lawful only after approval of the supreme leader (Vali e Faqih, ولی فقیه in Persian). According to this theory, even democratic acts like national election of presidents (which happens every four years in Iran) are lawful only when the Supreme Leader signs his approval.

Khamenei transformed the position of supreme leader, bringing many of the powers of the presidency with him into the office, turning it into an "omnipotent overseer of Iran's political scene", according to Vali Nasr, a scholar of Shiism. Officials under Khamenei influence the country's various powerful institutions, including the parliament, the presidency, the judiciary, the Revolutionary Guards, the military, the intelligence services, the police agencies, the clerical elite, the Friday prayer leaders and much of the media, as well as various nongovernmental foundations, organizations, councils, seminaries and business groups.^[4]

Khamenei is widely regarded as the figurehead of the country's conservative establishment.^[14] He has been under the influence of Navvab Safavi and Ruhollah Khomeini among aothers.

Ali Khamenei has been supportive of science progress in Iran. He was among the first Islamic clerics to allow stem cell research and therapeutic cloning.^[15] In 2004, Ayatollah Khamenei said that the country's progress is dependent on investment in the field of science and technology. He also said that attaching a high status to scholars and scientists in society would help talents to flourish and science and technology to become domesticated, thus ensuring the country's progress and development.^[16]

In 2007, Khamenei requested that government officials speed up Iran's move towards economic privatization. Its last move towards such a goal was in 2004, when Article 44 of the constitution was overturned. Article 44 had decreed that Iran's core infrastructure should remain state-run. Khamenei also suggested that ownership rights should be protected in courts set up by the Justice Ministry; the hope was that this new protection would give a measure of security to and encourage private investment.^[17]

Additionally, Khamenei has stated that he believes in the importance of nuclear technology for civilian purposes because "oil and gas reserves cannot last forever."^[18]

In 2000, Ali Khamenei sent a letter to Iranian parliament and vetoed revision of Iranian press law. He wrote: "The present press law has succeeded to a point to prevent this big plague. The (proposed) bill is not legitimate and in the interests of the system and the revolution."^[19] His use of "extra-legislative power" has been criticized widely by reformists and opposition groups. In reaction to the letter, some Parliament members voiced outrage and threatened to resign.^[20] Kayhan and Jomhuri-Eslami are two newspapers that are published under the management of Mr. Khamenei.

In late 1996, following a Fatwa by Ayatollah Khamenei stating that music education corrupts the minds of young children, many music schools were closed and music instruction to children under the age of 16 was banned by public establishments (although private instruction continued).^[21] Khamenei stated: "The promotion of music [both traditional and Western] in schools is contrary to the goals and teachings of Islam, regardless of age and level of study".^[22]

In July 2007, Ali Khamenei criticized Iranian women's rights activists and Convention on the Elimination of All forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW): "In our country ... some activist women, and some men, have been trying to play with Islamic rules in order to match international conventions related to women," Khamenei said. "This is wrong."^[23] However he is positive on reinterpreting Islamic law in a way that it is more favorable for women - but not by following Western conventions.^[24] Khamenei made these comments two days after Iranian women's rights activist Delaram Ali was sentenced to 34 months of jail and 10 lashes by Iran's judiciary.^[25] Iranian judiciary works under the responsibility of the supreme leader and is independent from the government.

Ali Khamenei claims that "Today, homosexuality is a major problem in the western world. They [western nations] however ignore it. But the reality is that homosexuality has become a serious challenge, pain and unsolvable problem for the intellectuals in the west."^[26] Ali Khamanei, however did not mention any names of western intellectuals.

In 2007, Iranian police which acts under the control of Supreme leader, launched a "Public Security Plan": The police arrested dozens of "thugs" to increase public security. The arrested "thugs" are sometimes beaten on camera in front of neighborhood inhabitants, or forced to wear hanging watering cans used for lavatory ablutions around their necks.^[27] During the first three months of the campaign against women not adhering fully to the strict Islamic dress code, in Tehran alone 62,785 women were stopped by police, and of these 1,837 were arrested. In the first three months, police arrested in the capital more than 8,000 young "criminals" who have offended public morals.

The Islamic Republic has not yet allowed a single Sunni mosque to be built in Tehran; although President Mohammad Khatami promised during election time to build a Sunni mosque in Tehran. After he won the elections, he was reminded of his promise but he said that the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had not agreed to the proposal.^[28]

In February 2004 Parliament elections, the Council of Guardians, a council of twelve members, half of whom are appointed by Khamenei, disqualified thousands of candidates, including many of the reformist members of the parliament and all the candidates of the Islamic Iran Participation Front party from running. It did not allow 80 members of the 6th Iranian parliament (including the deputy speaker) to run in the election. The conservatives won about 70% of the seats. The parliamentary election held on February 20, 2004 in Iran was a key turning point in that country's political evolution. The election marked the conclusive end of the campaign for political and social reform initiated by Mohammad Khatami after he was elected president in a landslide vote in May 1997.^[29]

The Council of Guardians did not let Ebrahim Yazdi or Hooshang Amirahmadi (among others) run in the 2005 presidential election. ^{[citation needed]}

Khamenei has said that human rights are a fundamental principle underlying Islamic teachings, including the rights to live, to be free, to benefit from justice and to welfare. He has criticised Western human rights advocates for hypocrisy by economically oppressing people in Third World countries and supporting despots and dictators.^[30]

He usually states that the American administration has committed many crimes and is therefore not authorized to judge human rights in Iran.^[31]

In a visit with Mohammad Taghi Mesbah Yazdi, Khamenei praised Mesbah’s books and thoughts as being original, very useful, solid and correct. He also stated that the Islamic world needs these ideas today more than any time in the past.^[32] Mesbah Yazdi advocates a return to the values of the 1979 Iranian revolution and is a prominent opponent of the Reformist movement in Iran.

Khamenei has shown support for the persecution of Bahá'ís and has signed documents recommending several organized methods of oppression and ways of decreasing the influence of Bahá'ís in Iran and abroad.^[33] According to a letter from the Chairman of the Command Headquarters of the Armed Forces in Iran addressed to the Ministry of Information, the Revolutionary Guard and the Police Force, Khamenei has also ordered the Command Headquarters to identify people who adhere to the Bahá'í Faith and to monitor their activities and gather any and all information about the members of the Bahá'í Faith.^[34][35]

After the September 11, 2001 attacks, Khamenei condemned the act and the attackers and called for a condemnation of terrorist activities all over the world, whether in the United States, Palestine, the Balkans, or elsewhere.^[36] He is quoted as saying, "Mass killings of human beings are catastrophic acts which are condemned wherever they may happen and whoever the perpetrators and the victims may be". ^[37] Candlelight vigils in Iran for the victims of the 9/11 attacks were commonplace during the next several nights.

On June 4, 2006, Khamenei said that Iran would disrupt energy shipments from the Persian Gulf region should the country come under attack from the US, insisting that Tehran will not give up its right to produce nuclear fuel.

On September 14, 2007, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (on 1st Friday prayer of Ramadan) predicted that George Bush and American officials will one day be tried in an international criminal court to be held "accountable" for the U.S.-led invasion.^[38]

In 2001 Khamenei famously remarked that "this cancerous tumor of a state [Israel] should be removed from the region." On the same occasion he proposed that "Palestinian refugees should return and Muslims, Christians and Jews could choose a government for themselves, excluding immigrant Jews."^[39]

In 2005 Khamenei responded to President Ahmadinejad's alleged remark that Israel should be "wiped off the map" by saying that "the Islamic Republic has never threatened and will never threaten any country."^[40] Moreover Khamenei's main advisor in foreign policy, Ali Akbar Velayati, refused to take part in Holocaust conference. In contrast to Ahmadinejad's remarks, Velayati said that Holocaust was a genocide and a historical reality. ^[41]

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has issued a fatwa saying the production, stockpiling and use of nuclear weapons was forbidden under Islam. The fatwa was cited in an official statement by the Iranian government at an August 2005 meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna.^[42]

Khamenei has four sons and 2 daughters, Mojtaba, Mostafa, Massoud, Maysam, Boshra, and Hoda. According to Gholam Ali Haddad-Adel.^{[citation needed]} He leads a modest household,^{[citation needed]} and has an austere lifestyle.^[4]

Since the founding of the Islamic Republic, Khamenei has held many government posts^[1]

• 1979 - Founded the Islamic Republic Party, along with like-minded clerics such as Mohammad Beheshti, Mohammad Javad Bahonar, Abdolkarim Mousavi Ardebili, and Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.
• 1980 - Secretary of Defense.
• 1980 - Supervisor of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards.
• 1980 - Leader of the Friday Congregational Prayer.
• 1980 - The Tehran Representative in the Consultative Assembly.
• 1981 - Ayatollah Khomeini's Representative in the High Security Council.
• 1982 - Elected President of the Islamic Republic of Iran after assassination of Muahmmad Ali Raja’i, and was re-elected to a second term in 1985.
• 1982 - chairman of the High Council of Revolution Culture Affairs.
• 1988 - President of the Expediency Council.
• 1989 - Chairman of the Constitution Revisal Committee.
• 1989 - Ayatollah Khamenei became the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran by choice of the Council of Experts, after the death of Ayatollah Khomeini.

Ayatollah Khamenei has numerous representatives in different organizations (army, judiciary system, universities etc.) and cities. Here are his most notable representatives:

• Abdolhossein Moezi (Representative in London)
• Hossein Shariatmadari (His representative at Kayhan)
• Ahmad Jannati (Head of Guardian Council)
• Ahmad Khatami (Tehran's Friday prayer Imam)
• Mohammad Yazdi (member of Guardian council and former head of Judiciary system)
• Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi (head of Judiciary system)
• Rahim Safavi (commander of Revolutionary Guards)
• Ali Larijani (former head of IRIB, current member of Supreme National Security Council)
• Ahmad Reza Radan Tehran's police chief awho was in charge of 2007 moralization campaign
• Gholamreza Rezvani appointed several times as a member of Guardian Council.

According to Iranian law insulting the leader is a crime and is punishable. Journalists and writers, thus avoid criticizing the leader openly in publications inside the country. Here is a list of some writers, journalists and politicians who were charged for "insulting Ali Khamenei":

• Ahmad Zeidabadi ^[43]
• Abdollah Nouri ^[44]
• Mojtaba Saminejad ^[45]
• Arash Sigarchi ^[46]

• Human Rights in Islam thesis

• The e-office of the Supreme Leader of Iran
• The official website of Ayatollah Khamenei
• BBC News' profile on Ayatollah Ali Khamenei
• Ayatollah current affairs news blog

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