Ali Khamenei: Ruthless revolutionary who held Iran in iron grip

Iran’s late supreme leader Ali Khamenei, whose funeral begins on July 4, had seen off a succession of crises throughout his rule with a mixture of repression and political cunning.

PARIS – Ali Khamenei suppressed dissent, kept up confrontation with the US and steered a path between competing political factions in over 3½ decades as Iran’s supreme leader.

But his domination of the Islamic republic came to an abrupt and bloody end on the morning of Feb 28, when he was killed along with several close family members in an Israeli air strike based on US intelligence on the first day of a five-week war.

Yet, the Khamenei era is in many ways not over – power was swiftly passed to his son Mojtaba, although he has yet to be seen in public since taking over as the third supreme leader of the Islamic republic.

Meanwhile, even after Ali Khamenei’s death, his social media accounts on X and Telegram regularly churn out past statements, while his image stares down from billboards at Iranians, often in a triple portrait with his predecessor Ruhollah Khomeini and his son Mojtaba.

As his funeral begins on July 4, he is now referred in state media as the Martyr Imam Khamenei, enshrining the spiritual status of a man who had been a key figure in the Islamic republic since shortly after its inception.

Decades of experience as a political survivor could not protect him from the torrent of bombs that also killed his son-in-law, daughter, daughter-in-law and granddaughter.

Khamenei, 86, had seen off a succession of crises throughout his rule with a mixture of repression and political cunning since taking on the lifetime post of leader of the Islamic revolution following the death of Khomeini.

He overcame 1999 student demonstrations, 2009 mass protests sparked by a disputed presidential election, and 2019 demonstrations that were rapidly and brutally suppressed.

The 2022 to 2023 Woman, Life, Freedom movement sparked by the death in custody of Iranian Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini, who had been arrested for allegedly violating the strict dress code for women, was put down in a deadly crackdown.

Khamenei was forced to go into hiding during the 12-day war against Israel in June 2025, according to US media reports, which exposed deep Israeli intelligence penetration of the Islamic republic that led to the killing of key security officials in air strikes.

Before the latest war erupted in 2026, his rule was challenged by two nights of mass street protests which were put down in a new crackdown by security forces that, according to rights groups, left thousands dead.

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