Ayatollah Khamenei, Embodied Fearsome Anti-Western Rule

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, 86, has been an inveterate foe of the West, crushing internal opposition while supporting proxy forces across the region in the hope of making his country respected and feared.U.S. President Donald Trump on Saturday declared that Khamenei died in the conflict that had defined his rule of Iran, and a senior Israeli official told Reuters his body had been found following U.S.-Israeli airstrikes on Iran.Iranian authorities had not confirmed his death but satellite images showed significant damage to the leader’s Tehran compound, one of the first targets of the bombing campaign. Khamenei’s death would represent a massive blow to the Islamic Republic that he had led since 1989, a decade after rising to prominence in the theocratic revolution that toppled Iran’s monarchy and rocked the Middle East. MOUNTING CRISES OF KHAMENEI’S RULE He survived foreign pressure before but, even before Saturday’s attack, was facing the gravest crisis of his 36-year rule, attempting to spin out negotiations with the United States over Iran’s nuclear programme.Already this year, he had ordered the deadliest crackdown since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, saying those protesting nationwide, initially against soaring prices, “should be put in their place” before security forces opened fire on demonstrators chanting “Death to the dictator!”. And only last June, Khamenei had been forced into hiding during 12 days of airstrikes by Israel and then the U.S. that killed several close associates and Revolutionary Guard commanders and smashed prized nuclear and missile facilities. That assault was among the many indirect results of the attack on Israel by the Iranian-backed Palestinian group Hamas on October 7, 2023, which not only triggered the war in Gaza but also spurred Israel to hammer Tehran’s other regional proxies. With Hezbollah weakened in Lebanon and Syria’s Bashar al-Assad toppled, Khamenei’s reach across the Middle East was stunted, while the U.S. demanded he abandon Iran’s last major strategic lever – its ballistic missiles. ‘After a lifetime of Hosseini struggle, unceasing and untiring, with a lofty and celestial spirit like the steadfast mountain of (the Islamic) guardianship,



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