Ali Khamenei

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Ali Khamenei Full Name: Sayyid Ali Hosseini Khamenei Alias: Ayatollah Khamenei Origin: Mashhad, Iran Occupation: Supreme Leader of Iran (1989 - present) President of Iran (1981 - 1989) Skills: Knowledge of Islam and politics Hobby: Issuing fatwas Threatening the United States and Israel Goals: Remain Supreme Leader of Iran (ongoing) Destroy Israel, Saudi Arabia and the United States (ongoing) Crimes: Mass murder Oppression Abuse of power Human rights abuses Anti-Semitism Holocaust denial Americophobia Anglophobia Xenophobia Misogyny Christophobia Arms trafficking Propaganda Torture Homophobia Type of Villain: Tyrannical Fanatic

“	Today, you are hated throughout the world. If you don't know this, you should. The peoples burn your flag. The Islamic peoples all over the world chant: 'Death to America!'	„
	~ Ali Khamenei about America

Sayyid Ali Hosseini Khamenei (born April 19^th, 1939) is a Twelver Shia Marja' and the second and current Supreme Leader of Iran, in office since 1989. He was previously President of Iran from 1981 to 1989. Khamenei is the second-longest serving head of state in the Middle East (after Oman's late Sultan Qaboos bin Said), as well as the second-longest serving Iranian leader of the last century, after Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.

According to his official website, Khamenei was arrested six times before being sent into exile for three years during Mohammad Reza Pahlavi's reign. He was the target of an attempted assassination in June 1981 that paralyzed his right arm.

Biography

Born to Seyyed Javad Khamenei, an Alim and Mujtahid born in Najaf, and Khadijeh Mirdamadi (daughter of Hashem Mirdamadi) in Mashhad, Khamenei is the second of eight children. Two of his brothers are also clerics; his younger brother, Hadi Khamenei, is a newspaper editor and cleric. His elder sister Fatemeh Hosseini Khamenei died in 2015, aged 89. He has an ethnic Azerbaijani background on his father's side, with one source claiming that his mother was an ethnic Persian speaker from Yazd. Some of his ancestors are from Tafresh in today's Markazi Province and migrated from their original home in Tafresh to Khamaneh near the Tabriz. Khamenei's great ancestor was Sayyid Hossein Tafreshi, a descendant of the Aftasi Sayyids, whose lineage supposedly reached to Sultan ul-Ulama Ahmad, known as Sultan Sayyid, a grandchild of Shia fourth Imam, Ali ibn Husayn.

His education began at the age of four, by learning Quran at Maktab; he spent his basic and advanced levels of seminary studies at the hawza of Mashhad, under mentors such as Sheikh Hashem Qazvini and Ayatollah Milani. Then, he went to Najaf in 1957, but soon returned to Mashhad due to his father's unwillingness to let him stay there. In 1958, he settled in Qom where he attended the classes of Seyyed Hossein Borujerdi and Ruhollah Khomeini. Like many other politically active clerics at the time, Khamenei was far more involved with politics than religious scholarship.

Khamenei was one of Iran's leaders during the Iranian Revolution as well as the subsequent Iran–Iraq War in the 1980s, and developed close ties with the now powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps which he controls, and whose commanders are elected and dismissed by him. The Revolutionary Guards have been used to suppress opposition to him. Khamenei then went to serve as the third President of Iran from 1981 to 1989, while becoming a close ally of the first Supreme Leader, Ruhollah Khomeini. Eventually, after Khomeini had a disagreement with the then heir apparent Hussein Ali Montazeri, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani claimed that Khomeini had chosen Khamenei as his successor while the Assembly of Experts deliberated to elect the next Supreme Leader. After Khomeini's death, Khameini was elected by the Assembly of Experts as the new Supreme Leader on June 4^th, 1989, at the age of 49. He has been head of the servants of Astan Quds Razavi since 14 April 1979.

Today, as Supreme Leader, Khamenei is the head of state of Iran and the commander-in-chief of its armed forces. For this reason, he is considered the most powerful political authority in the country. As Supreme Leader, Khamenei can issue decrees and make the final decisions on the main policies of the government in many fields such as economy, the environment, foreign policy, and national planning in Iran. According to Karim Sadjadpour, Khamenei has either direct or indirect control over the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government, as well as the military and media. All candidates for the Assembly of Experts, the Presidency and the Majlis (Parliament) are vetted by the Guardian Council, whose members are selected directly or indirectly by the Supreme Leader of Iran. There have been also instances when the Guardian Council reversed its ban on particular people after being ordered to do so by Khamenei.

There have been major protests during Khamenei's reign, including the 1994 Qazvin Protests, the 1999 Iranian student protests, the 2009 Iranian presidential election protests the 2011–12 Iranian protests, and the 2017–18 Iranian protests. Journalists, bloggers, and other individuals have been put on trial in Iran for the charge of insulting Supreme Leader Khamenei, often in conjunction with blasphemy charges. Their sentences have included lashing and jail time, and some of them have died in custody. Regarding the nuclear program of Iran, Ali Khamenei had issued a fatwa in 2003 saying that the production, stockpiling, and use of all kinds of weapons of mass destruction is forbidden.

Khamenei has faced significant criticism from pressure groups and international observers for Iran's numerous human rights violations; the United Nations General Assembly has condemned Iran for human rights violations 67 times. Anti-government protests have been met with violence from Iranian authorities, including in the case of the 2019 Mahshahr Massacre when the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps indiscriminately opened fire on protestors, killing 40 - 150 people. More recently, protests in 2022 in response to a woman named Mahsa Amini being allegedly beaten to death by police were met with tear gas and live ammunition. Iran is governed by hardline Islamic law, with homosexuality being potentially punishable by death and women are legally considered second-class citizens.

Khamenei has been criticised for promoting anti-semitism and Holocaust denial, having publicly claimed that whether or not the Holocaust really happened is "uncertain". He has also outlined a "nine-point plan" to wipe the state of Israel off the face of the Earth and has been accused of providing support to the anti-Israel militant groups Hezbollah and Palestinian Islamic Jihad against Israel. Khamenei has accused gender equality activists of being a Zionist plant.

During Khamenei's reign, Iran has been implicated in numerous terrorist activities in other nations. In September 1992 exiled Kurdish-Iranian dissidents Sadegh Sharafkandi, Fattah Abdoli and Homayoun Ardalan and their translator Nouri Dehkordi were gunned down at the Mykonos restaurant in Berlin. Two Iranian agents and three Lebanese were convicted of the murders, which a German court later ruled were ordered by Iranian intelligence minister Ali Fallahian with the direct consent of Supreme Leader Khamenei. Argentine prosecutors have accused Iran of colluding in the 1994 AMIA bombing, a suicide bombing in Buenos Aires that resulted in 85 deaths, and issued arrest warrants for several Iranian officials in connection with the bombing. In October 2011 the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation uncovered a plot by Iranian agents Manssor Arbabsiar and Gholam Shakuri to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the U.S. in a bomb attack that would potentially kill hundreds of American civilians. Khamenei has been implicated in the 2017 murder of British national Saeed Karimian, who had been convicted in absentia of spreading propaganda against Iran. The Iranian government has been linked to multiple attacks on foreign oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman in 2019 and 2021, including a drone attack on the Japanese tanker Mercer Street which left two dead.

In January 2020, Iranian generals Qasem Soleimani and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis were assassinated by a U.S. drone strike in retaliation for attacks on a U.S. airbase and the U.S. embassy in Baghdad by Iran-backed militias. Khamenei vowed retribution against the United States and ordered Operation Martyr Soleimani, in which 12 ballistic missiles were fired at the Ayn al-Asad airbase in Iraq. No-one was killed, but 110 American servicemen were left with traumatic brain injuries.