Who is Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei?

A week after Israel launched a surprise attack on Iran to eliminate its nuclear program, all eyes are now on the country’s supreme chief of the country, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Thursday, following an Iranian missile strike which struck an Israeli hospital, the Minister of Israel of Defense Israel Katz declared in a statement that “Khamenei will be held responsible for his crimes”, adding during a visit to one of the impact sites that “a person like that should not exist,” the appellant later “the Hitler of the modern era” Israel.

During decades of rules, Khamenei built an impenetrable circle around him inside and outside Iran. Now, I Israel out of some of his closest aid and security personalities, as well as his militant Islamic allies, the supreme leader, weakens to seem more and more isolated.

Iran hits the Major Israeli hospital after saying that Israel has struck its Arak heavy water reactor

Supreme leader Ali Khamenei is standing with military leaders. (AP)

“He describes himself as a revolutionary, not a diplomat,” Fox News Digital in Fox News, Dr Meir Javedanfar, professor in Iran at Reichman University, near Tel Aviv, who grew up in Tehran.

On Wednesday, this militancy and the determination to stay in power occurred in the statements of Khamenei, who said that “the Iranian nation will not surrender” and that “war will be welcomed with war, bombing with bombardment and strikes with strike”, according to local media.

Born in 1939 of a religious but modest family in Mashad, in eastern Iran, Khamenei was among the Islamist activists who played an instrumental role in the 1979 Pivot Revolution to overthrow the Shah supported by the United States, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was president of Iran twice and a close ally of the country’s first supreme leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeni. (Getty Images)

A close ally of the first supreme leader of Iran, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who led the Revolution and founded the Islamic Republic, Khamenei became a confidence lieutenant, helping to promote the concept of the new governance regime linked to the religious relationship.

For a large part of the 1980s, he was a largely ceremonious Iranian role. In addition, when Khomeini died in 1989, Khamenei, who, according to some reports, was not yet qualified for the post, Rose becomes the country’s supreme leader.

Since then, Khamenei has worked to consolidate his absolute power, tightening his grip on the political, military and security of the country, while repressing dissent and taking a firm position against progressive ideas, the West and Israel.

Lisa Daftari, an Iran expert and editor-in-chief of The Foreign Desk, told Fox News Digital: “The rule of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was marked by an implacable brutality and repression, both in Iran and beyond its borders. Under its direct order, the regime has executed hundreds of prisoners during the past year, notably women, And continues to keep the world record for exams and torture.

“The state police and the” notorious morality police “, all under the control of Khamenei, apply a severe interpretation of Sharia law, violently eliminating dissent and targeting women and minorities. His apparatus has not only silence the adversaries at home thanks to massive arrests, torture and extrajudicial murders, but also orchery of the Autodes. expelled the Terrors and also exported the region.

Daftari concluded: “Khamenei’s regime is responsible for the death of countless Iranians and even Americans, with blood on the hands both domestic repression and international violence. For almost five decades, Iran was managed as a police state, where fear, surveillance and systematic human rights abuses are tools of governance and methods of survival.”

The supreme Iranian chief of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, on the right, welcomes President-Syrian Bashar Assad of the time in Tehran, Iran, on February 25, 2019. (Office of the Iranian supreme chief via AP, file)

Fox News survey: Voters think that Iran is a real threat to American security, but separated from the strikes of Israel

Khamenei also invested massively in the so-called axis of resistance through the region, including the support of the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, Hezbollah in Lebanon, from the Houthi movement to Yemen and other militant militias. Many of these allies, as well as the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria, collapsed in the past year and a half under Israeli military pressure.

In Iran, the Khamenei conservative leadership style has faced challenges over the years, especially in 2009 after the elections where Khamenei said victory for outgoing president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, causing massive popular demonstrations – with demonstrators calling for the fall of Khamenei.

Mass demonstrations also broke out in the fall of 2022 after Mahsa Amini, a 22 -year -old, died while she was owned by the morality police for having allegedly carried her scarf. The demonstrations were brutally deposited, including many people arrested put to death by his regime.

The Iranian supreme chief, the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, on the right, meets the secretary general of the Islamic movement of the jihad Ziyad al-Nakhalah, on the left, and the former leader of the terrorist group of Hamas Ismail Haniyeh, who was murdered one day after the taking of this photo, Tehran, Iran, on July 30, 2024. (Iranian Leader Press Office / Handout / Anadolu via Getty Images)

However, according to the Council of Foreign Relations, the supreme head of Iran remains “leader in life” within the framework of an office ruling system which puts him at the head of the state and gives him a vast control derived from religious authority.

Click here to obtain the Fox News app

“When he was a young man, he studied the writings of the founders of the Muslim Brotherhood and always believed in militant Islam,” said Javedanfar, adding that he was also “always anti-Israeli to the point of anti-Semitism”.

The supreme chief, the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, goes to the crowd while attending a ceremony marking the 30th anniversary of the death of the late revolutionary founder Ayatollah Khomeini, presented in the poster at the rear, to his mausoleum just outside Tehran, Iran, on Tuesday, June 4, 2019. (Office of the Iranian supreme chief via AP)

“I think he believes that it is necessary to face Israel in all possible means,” he said, noting that there is no sign that Khamenei wishes to reduce.

“I am sure that many people warned him that Hamas’ support after October 7, and Hezbollah and other groups could wage war in Iran’s territory, but he obviously did not listen,” said Javedanfar.