Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s Death Won’t Be Missed

Comment Editor Dahlia Farzi examines why Khamenei’s theocratic iron fist will be greeted with relief and not tears. For a nation suffocated under decades of clerical tyranny, his death embodies freedom and hope for Iranians.

As one of Iran’s longest-serving leaders, Khamenei was almost as ubiquitous in Iranian society as his predecessor, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who founded the Islamic Republic of Iran in 1979.

Iran has had only two supreme leaders since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. 

Khamenei headed an all-powerful office – he was Head of State and Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces, including the elite Revolutionary Guards (IRGC). The same group the European Council designated as a terrorist organisation on 29 January.

The second of eight children in a religious family, his father was a mid-ranking cleric from the Shia branch of Islam, the dominant sect in Iran. According to his official biography, Khamenei’s father, Javad Khamenei, was born and received religious education in Najaf, Iraq, historically the holiest city in Shi’a Islam.

In autobiographical reflections he noted his education was dominated by the study of the Quran. His mother often recited Quranic verses, influencing his early clerical rank at the age of just 11.

Khamenei was arrested six times before being exiled for three years during the reign of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. During the 1970s, Marxist groups were also trying to get rid of the Shah. The cleric Ali Khamenei ended up sharing a prison cell with Houshang Asadi, a young communist.

One can only think of the Mojahedin-e-Khalq or MEK, a former terrorist group that also opposed Pahlavi’s reign. The group’s foundational ideology has been described by one historian as “a combination of Islam and Marxism.” Despite participating in the 1979 Islamic Revolution, in the early 1980s they fell out with the newly established Islamic Republic led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, and launched attacks against it. In response, the government detained and “indiscriminately” executed thousands of MEK supporters. A cheap attempt to humanise a dictatorship ended in exile, where they ultimately settled in Albania observing Iran from the sidelines.

After the Islamic revolution, its leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini appointed him Friday prayer leader of the capital, Tehran. Every week, his political sermons were broadcast throughout the country which firmly established Khamenei as part of the new leadership of the country.

In the tumultuous first months after the revolution, a group of militant university students loyal to Khomeini occupied the US embassy. On 4 November 1979, a band of 400 Iranians who described themselves as students cut through the heavy chains on the gate of the United States Embassy in Tehran and, meeting no resistance from Iranian guards there, seized the compound. The militants had one demand: the surrender of the deposed Shah, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, who, two weeks earlier, had flown from Mexico to New York for treatment of cancer. President Carter tried pleading, tried bargaining, tried threatening and, in one instance, tried attacking, but it was all in vain. 

Iran’s revolutionary leaders – including Khamenei – supported the students, who were protesting against America’s decision to give sanctuary to the deposed shah.

The hostage-taking lasted for 444 days.

Shortly after the crisis, Khamenei survived an assassination attempt whom he attributed to the MEK. In June 1981, the dissident group hid a bomb inside a tape recorder which exploded as he delivered a lecture. He permanently lost the use of his right arm and was badly injured.

The start of the Iranian revolt had began.

In June 1989, after Khomeini’s death, the Islamic Republic faced a challenge in choosing his successor.

The Constitution at the time deemed only a “source of emulation” (marja-e taqlid) qualified to lead, but Khamenei did not hold that clerical rank. A few months later, the Constitution was amended and the requirement of being a “source of emulation” was removed.

In November 1989, the Assembly of Experts convened again and formally and permanently appointed Khamenei as leader of the Islamic Republic.

Khamenei gradually turned the institution of the Supreme Leader into an all-encompassing power that had the final say in every arena – from security and foreign policy to the economy and culture.

Opposition groups and student unions emerged in great numbers in the wake of July 1999. They lacked leadership and differed in their degrees of religiosity and political liberalism, but agreed on a separation of mosque and state, and basic civil liberties such as freedom of the press and comingling of the sexes. United by these goals, they began demanding for the first time, the complete removal of the Islamic theocracy. 

A decade later, a revolt against an allegedly rigged presidential election saw demonstrators pepper-sprayed, beaten, and shot. Shots were fired at supporters of the defeated presidential candidate, Mir Hossein Mousavi, who had defied an official ban on a mass rally in central Tehran.

In 2019, when spiralling fuel prices resulted in street protests, Khamenei imposed a near-total internet shutdown from 15-19 November, killing at least 304 people. The police then shot protesters dead with machine gun fire. One video verified and geolocated by the Digital Verification Corps shows handcuffed detainees being taken into the grounds of Mali Abad police station in Shiraz, Fars province, and then beaten, punched and kicked by security forces.

In September 2022, Mahsa Jina Amini, an Iranian- Kurdish woman, was arrested by Iran’s morality police for her non-compliance with the country’s Islamic dress code. Three days later, she died in police custody. Amini’s death sparked widespread protests for over 100 days, with the average age of protesters being a mere 15.

On 28 December 2025, protests erupted across the country demanding fundamental change after decades of repression and a failing economy. Security forces responded with lethal force to disperse protesters, unlawfully using force, firearms and other prohibited weapons, as well as conducting sweeping mass arrests, including of children as young as 14 years old. Since 8 January, authorities cut internet access to hide their crimes, and to prevent people in Iran from sharing information with the outside world. January 2026 marks the deadliest period of repression by the Iranian authorities in decades of Amnesty’s research.

On 3 January 2026, Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, denounced protesters as “rioters” who should be “put in their place.”

On 28 February 2026, Khamenei finally got “put in [his] place.”

“Khamenei, one of the most evil people in History, is dead,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform, “This is the single greatest chance for the Iranian people to take back their Country.” Rarely has he been more correct.

With an Iranian state TV presenter crying while announcing the death of this merciless tyrant, one can only feel the bitter irony as a regime mourns the very man who killed an estimated 30,000 protesters earlier this year. BBC Persian verified videos of Iranians celebrating in several cities last night with footage from Isfahan to Karaj. Footage on the streets of Isfahan in central Iran shows people cheering and honking their car horns in jubilation.

Reuters has also verified videos where in the town of Galleh Dar in southern Iran, people knocked down a monument commemorating Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who founded the Islamic Republic in 1979.

“Am I dreaming? Hello to the new world!” a man can be heard shouting in the video, as fires burned on a traffic circle where the monument was toppled, prompting cheers and applause.

For a nation that learned not to dream, it must feel like one now.