Khamenei dies after 37 years of ruling Iran

An overnight ayatollah title and a lifetime of paranoia shaped 37 years of autocratic rule that ended Saturday with a U.S.-Israeli strike.

Khamenei's accidental rise to power

• Ali Khamenei lacked the senior religious credentials his role demanded.
• Hashemi Rafsanjani engineered the succession, expecting a puppet leader.
• Khamenei openly admitted to being a minor seminarian at his inauguration.
• That insecurity fueled decades of hypervigilant, brutal governance.

Resistance was the entire ideology

• Khamenei treated hostility toward America as a regime requirement.
• Reformist President Mohammad Khatami confirmed that enmity was baked into the system.
• Official slogans prioritized defiance over national development.
• Every policy decision is filtered through an anti-Western lens.

Early life forged his worldview

• Khamenei grew up in Mashhad, the second of eight children in a clerical family.
• Six arrests by the Shah's secret police reportedly included torture and solitary confinement.
• Many speculated that his hatred of Israel and America was born in those Savak cells.
• He fell under Khomeini's influence while studying in Qom during his twenties.

Iran paid a steep price under his watch

• The national currency became one of the world's most devalued currencies.
• Around 150,000 Iranians fled the country every year due to brain drain.
• Internet censorship ranked among the planet's most restrictive.
• Iranian passports became one of the most frequently denied worldwide.

Rafsanjani's rivalry lasted almost three decades

• Rafsanjani mistakenly believed the young cleric would stay subordinate.
• Khamenei outmaneuvered him politically over the following years.
• Their power struggle defined internal Iranian politics for a generation.
• Rafsanjani died in 2017, and Khamenei buried him both politically and literally.