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Message: [QUOTE="Queen, post: 87529, member: 27"] 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 [LIST] [*]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. [/LIST] Resistance was the entire ideology [LIST] [*]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. [/LIST] Early life forged his worldview [LIST] [*]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. [/LIST] Iran paid a steep price under his watch [LIST] [*]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. [/LIST] Rafsanjani's rivalry lasted almost three decades [LIST] [*]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. [/LIST] [/QUOTE]

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