A week after Israel launched a surprise attack on Iran aiming to wipe out its nuclear program, all eyes are now on the country’s reclusive supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
On Thursday, following an Iranian missile strike that hit an Israeli hospital, Israel Defense Minister Israel Katz said in a statement that "Khamenei will be held accountable for his crimes," adding during a visit to one of the impact sites that "a person like that should not exist," later calling him "the modern day Hitler," according to the Times of Israel.
Over decades of rule, Khamenei has built an impenetrable circle around him both inside and outside of Iran. Now, with Israel taking out some of his closest aides and senior security figures, as well as significantly weakening its militant Islamic allies across the region, the supreme leader is beginning to look increasingly isolated.
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"He calls himself a revolutionary, not a diplomat," Dr. Meir Javedanfar, a lecturer in Iran Studies at Reichman University near Tel Aviv who grew up in Tehran, told Fox News Digital, adding that he sees himself as a "revolutionary."
On Wednesday, that militancy and determination to stay in power came through in statements by Khamenei, who said the "Iranian nation will not surrender" and "war will be met with war, bombing with bombing, and strike with strike," according to local media reports.
Born in 1939 to a religious but modest family in Mashad, eastern Iran, Khamenei was among the Islamist activists who played an instrumental role in the pivotal 1979 revolution to overthrow the U.S.-backed shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.
A close ally of Iran’s first supreme leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who led the revolution and founded the Islamic Republic, Khamenei emerged as a trusted lieutenant, helping to promote the new regime’s concept of religiously-dominated governance.
For much of the 1980s, he served as Iran’s president, a largely ceremonious role. Additionally, when Khomeini died in 1989, Khamenei, who according to some reports was not yet qualified for the position, rose to become the country’s supreme leader.
Since then, Khamenei has worked to consolidate his absolute power, tightening his grip on the country’s political, military and security apparatus, while cracking down on dissent and taking a firm stand against progressive ideas, the West and Israel.
Lisa Daftari, an expert on Iran and editor-in-chief of The Foreign Desk, told Fox News Digital, "Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s rule has been marked by unrelenting brutality and repression, both within Iran and beyond its borders. Under his direct command, the regime has executed hundreds of prisoners in just the past year, including women, and continues to hold the world record for executions and torture.
"The state police and notorious 'morality police,’ all under Khamenei’s control, enforce a severe interpretation of Sharia law, violently suppressing dissent and targeting women and minorities. His apparatus has not only silenced opponents at home through mass arrests, torture, and extrajudicial killings, but has also orchestrated assassinations of dissidents abroad and exported terror across the region."
Daftari concluded, "Khamenei’s regime is responsible for the deaths of countless Iranians and even Americans, with blood on his hands from both domestic crackdowns and international violence. For almost five decades, Iran has been run as a police state, where fear, surveillance, and systematic human rights abuses are tools of governance and methods of regime survival."
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Khamenei has also invested heavily in the so-called axis of resistance across the region, including backing the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthi movement in Yemen and other militant militias. Many of these allies, as well as the regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria, have collapsed over the last year and a half under Israeli military pressure.
Inside Iran, Khamenei’s conservative-style of leadership has faced challenges over the years, including briefly in 2009 following elections where Khamenei declared victory for the incumbent president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, sparking massive popular demonstrations - with some protestors calling for Khamenei’s downfall.
Mass protests also broke out in the autumn of 2022 after Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old, died while detained by the morality police for allegedly wearing her headscarf improperly. The protests were brutally put down, with many of those arrested put to death by his regime.
However, according to the Council For Foreign Relations, Iran’s supreme leader remains "leader for life" under a clerical ruling system that puts him at the head of state and affords him vast control derived from religious authority.
"When he was a young man, he studied the writings of the founders of Muslim Brotherhood, and always believed in militant Islam," said Javedanfar, adding that he has also "always been anti-Israel to the point of antisemitism."
"I think he believes in confronting Israel in every means possible," he said, noting that there are no signs Khamenei is interested in backing down.
"I'm sure many people had warned him that supporting Hamas after October 7, and Hezbollah and other groups could bring war to Iran's territory but he obviously, he didn't listen," Javedanfar said.
