An interesting piece by Shiraz Maher on the late unlamented Khamenei’s career, and his downfall. At the New Statesman:
Shias believe the twelfth imam, Muhammad al-Mahdi, never died and is in occultation, waiting for God to restore him near the end of times when he will establish justice. Contemporary Shia Islam had therefore regressed into staid form, simply waiting for the return of their promised messiah. Khomeini changed all this. Rather than wait passively for the imam to appear, he argued that the clergy had a duty to become active political agents, preparing conditions on the ground for his arrival. This famously involved establishing a political trust (known as wilayat al-faqih) by which jurists would create an Islamic state and maintain it as guardians until the Mahdi’s promised return. This was a dramatically more strategic posture than the quietist approach Iran’s clergy had previously been used to.
Although this doctrine was codified in 1970, the ideas behind it had been germinating for long before. For example, when Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last Shah of Iran, announced his so-called White Revolution in January 1963, an expensive programme of both social and economic reforms, Khomeini was stirred into action. He developed two crucial tents, signals of the ultimate trajectory of his revolutionary thinking. The first was that he regarded the Shah’s reforms as undermining Islam by expanding the franchise to include women and by empowering non-Muslims to hold public offices and related positions, including within the judiciary. The second was that he regarded the ultimate source of these reforms as stemming from the United States and Israel, infusing his worldview with a deep-rooted anti-imperialism.
“Anti-imperialism” isn’t quite the phrase I’d use. Anti-Westernism, antisemitism, anti-feminism, anti-science, anti-secularism, anti-rationalism. Reactionary and regressive to its core.
His [Khamenei’s] steadfast loyalty was rewarded once Khomeini came to power following the Islamic revolution in 1979, with Khamenei holding a series of prominent positions. He was appointed to the Revolutionary Council and also became President in 1981. But it was another position conferred upon him the previous year which really signified his growing prominence – and intractability – within the Islamic Republic. In January 1980, Khamenei was appointed Imam of Friday Prayer in Tehran, a position invested with greater purpose than a merely straightforward clerical appointment. In revolutionary Iran, it represents the primary instrument of state power through which the regime delivers official addresses to its people. Khamenei cherished the role so much that he never gave it up.
These offices allowed him to develop both religious and political visibility, paving the way for him to succeed Khomeini after his death in 1989. Rising to become supreme leader aged just 50, Khamenei lacked his predecessor’s charisma and force of personality, so instead pursued a more technocratic process of institutionalising the revolution into a hulking bureaucracy. In doing so, he centralised power around himself in two significant ways – expanding the scope and authority of both his personal office and that of the Revolutionary Guard units in the Iranian military (known as the IRGC).
This approach stems from his time as President, during which he also served as Khomeini’s de facto defence envoy during the Iran-Iraq war, often visiting the frontlines and developing a close relationship with leading military officials. Following the conflict with Saddam Hussein, he embarked on disastrous programme of cultivating the so-called “axis of resistance” abroad and empowering the IRGC at home. He developed a dual strategy: the IRGC would protect the home front and maintain order, while Shia proxies abroad would contain the threat from Saddam. Throughout the 1990s, it seemed to work, prompting Khamenei to revisit the idea of cultivating an even deeper policy of “forward defence” when faced by challenges such as the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the Arab Spring of 2011, the Syrian Civil War and the rise of Isis.
Iran’s sphere of influence grew unchecked across the Levant with deep entrenchments across Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and Yemen. Not only did it provide a layer of defence, but it also fulfilled Khamenei’s anti-imperial worldview. He believed that Iran was now successfully curtailing a malignant Israeli-American alliance which had asserted itself across the Gulf, but which he had managed to undercut in the Levant.
But all this lulled Khamenei into a false sense of security. He believed Iran’s labyrinthine web of proxies would make it impossible to attack him, a revolutionary regime buffered by a regional rolodex. It was a chimera. The fallout from 7 October revealed just how threadbare the network was, as Israel pummelled Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, and various associated militias operating across Iraq. When Bashar al-Assad was suddenly ousted in December 2024, Iran also lost its airbridge to Lebanon, further isolating Hezbollah, once regarded as the jewel in the IRGC’s crown. To understand just how neutered that network is today, consider that none of these proxies has vowed any retaliatory response to Khamenei’s assassination, beyond issuing hagiographical eulogies.
This collapse reveals just how decayed and deracinated Khamenei’s legacy now is. His traditional support for the Palestinian issue once allowed him to straddle the Sunni-Shia divide, casting Iran as a global bulwark of not just Shia interests, but Islam as a whole. After all, he argued, only Iran was providing any meaningful support for Hamas. This was a view some radical Sunnis were once inclined to support. Yusuf al-Qaradawi, for example, the late spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, urged Sunnis to set aside sectarian differences and support Hezbollah during their 2006 war against Israel. Later, when Khamenei oversaw the deployment of both Shia militias and IRGC forces to Syria where they engaged in appalling sectarian violence, Qaradawi recanted his position and confessed to having been duped by the Iranian leadership. The change in attitude is evident: the minarets of mosques across Syria sang celebratory calls once news of Khamenei’s assassination was confirmed.….
All this delivered Khamenei to his ultimate end. Presiding over a movement which, for decades, has chanted “Death to America” and “Death to Israel”, it was ultimately that axis which visited death upon him. Social media reports reveal a deeply divided Iran in the aftermath – perfectly capturing the state he built. His messianic supporters are mourning the loss of their leader and vow revenge, blinded to the realities of his ruinous revolution. Ordinary Iranians lament a stunted economy, the squandered wealth on foreign adventures, and half a century sacrificed to ideology. Amid the rubble and ruin, they ask: who will rise to rebuild?
While ordinary Iranian women lament a half-century sacrificed to extreme Islamist misogyny, and Iranians in general mourn the imposition of a cruel, rigid puritan ideology that squeezed the life out of Persia’s ancient culture.
Mick Hartley 