For more than three decades, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei ruled Iran with a steady glare and a closed fist. He died on Saturday at 86.
Ayatollah Khamenei, the Islamic Republic’s second supreme leader, hardened the revolution beyond the vision of its founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who held power for a decade. He blocked reform, dismissed protests as Western “sedition,” and answered unrest with arrests and executions. He also strengthened the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, using its intelligence arm to police the streets and silence critics.
Beyond Iran’s borders, he armed and trained militia from Gaza to Yemen, pressing Israel and rival Saudi Arabia without courting direct war. He called the United States “the Great Satan,” denounced Israel in venomous terms and aided Russia’s suicide drone attacks in Ukraine.
After the Palestinian militant group Hamas attacked Israel in 2023, he backed anti-Israel fighters in the war that followed. Yet, Iran’s advancing nuclear program, paired with Ayatollah Khamenei’s blistering rhetoric, drew crippling sanctions, deepening isolation and hardening the nation’s standing as a global pariah.
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