Age, Biography, and Wiki
Ali Hosseini Khamenei was born on July 17, 1939, which makes him 85 years old as of 2024. He is a cleric and politician who rose to prominence as a close disciple of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the architect of the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Khamenei has held the position of Supreme Leader since 1989, succeeding Ayatollah Khomeini.
| Occupation | Revolutionaries |
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| Date of Birth | 19 April 1939 |
| Age | 86 Years |
| Birth Place | Mashhad, Khorasan, Imperial State of Iran |
| Horoscope | Aries |
| Country | Iran |
Height, Weight & Measurements
There is limited public information available about Ali Khamenei's physical measurements, such as height and weight.
According to his official website, Khamenei was arrested six times before being exiled for three years during the reign of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. In June 1981, after the Iranian revolution and the overthrow of the shah, he was the target of an attempted assassination that paralysed his right arm. Khamenei was one of Iran's leaders during the Iran–Iraq War in the 1980s, and developed close ties with the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, which he controls, and whose commanders are elected and dismissed by him. The Revolutionary Guards have been deployed to suppress opposition to the Islamic Republic of Iran. Khamenei served as the third president of Iran from 1981 to 1989, while becoming a close ally of the first supreme leader, Ruhollah Khomeini. Shortly before his death, Khomeini had a disagreement with his deputy – Hussein Ali Montazeri – and there was quandary for choosing a successor when Khomeini died. The Assembly of Experts elected Khamenei as the next supreme leader on 4 June 1989, at age 50. According to Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, Khamenei was the man Khomeini had endorsed as his successor. Khamenei has been head of the servants of Astan Quds Razavi since 14 April 1979.
Khamenei narrowly escaped an assassination attempt by the Mujahedin-e Khalq when a bomb, concealed in a tape recorder, exploded beside him. On 27 June 1981, while Khamenei had returned from the frontline, he went to the Aboozar Mosque according to his Saturday's schedule. After the first prayer, he lectured to worshippers who had written their questions on paper. Meanwhile, a young man who pressed a button put a tape recorder accompanied by papers on the desk in front of Khamenei. After a minute the recorder began whistling, then suddenly exploded. "A gift of Furqan Group to the Islamic Republic" was written on the inner wall of the tape recorder. Khamenei's treatment took several months and his arm, vocal cords and lungs were seriously injured. He was permanently injured, losing the use of his right arm.
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Dating & Relationship Status
Khamenei is married and has six children, including Mojtaba Khamenei, who is noted for his influence within the family. There is no public information regarding his current relationship status beyond his family.
Born to Javad Khamenei, an Alim and Mujtahid born in Najaf, Iraq, 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. His father was an ethnic Azerbaijani from Khamaneh, while his mother was an ethnic Persian 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 Tabriz.
Khamenei's education began at the age of four, by learning the 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.
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| Husband | Mansoureh Khojasteh Bagherzadeh (m. 1964) |
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Net Worth and Salary
Ali Khamenei's personal net worth is reported to be approximately $50,000, a figure that contrasts sharply with the vast financial empire he oversees. However, his family and allies are believed to control assets worth between $95 billion and $200 billion through an organization called Setad (Headquarters for Executing the Order of the Imam), which operates independently of the Iranian Parliament.
Writing in The Daily Telegraph, Damien McElroy and Ahmad Vahdat observed: "The ayatollah likes to cultivate an image of austerity but receives major commissions from the Iranian oil and arms industries and there have been regular claims that he and his son have amassed a fortune running into billions of dollars." A six-month investigation by Reuters has said that Khamenei controls a "financial empire" worth approximately US$95 billion that the Iranian Parliament does not oversee, a figure much larger than the estimated wealth of the late Shah of Iran Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. According to the Reu
Career, Business, and Investments
Khamenei's career has been marked by his role as a key figure in the Iranian Revolution and his subsequent rise to the position of Supreme Leader. His influence extends beyond politics to significant business and real estate interests through Setad, which includes banks, farms, cement companies, and other assets. Despite his modest personal lifestyle, Khamenei's control over these assets provides him substantial political leverage.
In 1989, Ayatollah Khomeini dismissed Ayatollah Montazeri as his political successor, giving the position to Khamenei instead. Because Khamenei was neither a marja' or ayatollah, the Assembly of Experts had to modify the constitution to award him the position of Iran's new Supreme Leader (a decision opposed by several grand ayatollahs). Khamenei officially succeeded Ruhollah Khomeini after Khomeini's death, being elected as the new Supreme Leader by the Assembly of Experts on 4 June 1989.
Since Khamenei was not a marja' at the time – which the Iranian constitution required—he was named as the temporary Supreme Leader. Later, the constitution was amended to remove that requirement and the Assembly of Experts reconvened on 6 August 1989 to reconfirm Khamenei with 60 votes out of 64 present. On 29 April 1989, responding to the letter of Ayatollah Ali Meshkini, the head of committee responsible for revising the Constitution, asking Khomeini's viewpoint regarding the Marja' criteria, Khomeini said: "From the very beginning, I believed and insisted that there is no need for the requirements of marja'iyyat (authority in jurisprudence). A pious mujtahid (jurist-intellectual), who is approved by the esteemed Assembly of Experts (Majlis-i Khobregan), will suffice". In a video that surfaced during the 2017–2018 Iranian protests, Khamenei is seen before the assembly said he was not religiously qualified to be a Supreme leader. Khamenei, who was ranked as a Hujjat al-Islam and not a marja' as required by the Iranian constitution, said he would only be a "ceremonial leader", and was reassured by Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani the position would be "temporary" until a referendum, apparently planned for one year later.
On 29 August 2022, al-Haeri announced his resignation from the position of marja due to old age and illness. This was described as the first time in history a marja has ever resigned from his position. He called on his followers to follow Ali Khamenei, Supreme Leader of Iran as "the best person for the leadership of our people and removing the aggressors".
According to Vali Nasr of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, "[Khamenei] [took] many of the powers of the presidency with him and [turned] the office of the supreme leader into the omnipotent overseer of Iran's political scene". In Nasr's view, Khamenei is an "unusual sort of dictator". Officials under Khamenei influence the country's various powers, and sometimes bickering, institutions, including "the parliament, the presidency, the judiciary, the Revolutionary Guards, the military, the intelligence services, the police agencies, the clerical elite, the Friday prayer leaders and much of the media", as well as various "nongovernmental foundations, organizations, councils, seminaries and business groups".
In 2007, Khamenei called for privatising state-owned companies, including the telephone company, three banks and dozens of small oil and petrochemical enterprises. After a few months, at a televised meeting with then-President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his Cabinet ministers, important clerics, the leader of parliament and provincial governors, the heads of state broadcasting and the Iranian chamber of commerce, Khamenei ordered: "to pass some laws, sell off some businesses, and be quick about it". Khamenei warned that "those who are hostile to these policies are the ones who are going to lose their interests and influence".
Social Network
There is no prominent social media presence for Ali Khamenei, as his public image is more traditionally maintained through official statements and appearances.
Khamenei was a key figure in the Iranian Revolution in Iran and a close confidant of Ruhollah Khomeini. Since the founding of the Islamic Republic, Khamenei has held many government posts. Muhammad Sahimi claims that his political career began after the Iranian Revolution, when the former President of Iran, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, then a confidant of Khomeini, brought Khamenei into Khomeini's inner circle. Later on, Hassan Rouhani, then a member of Parliament, arranged for Khamenei to get his first major post in the provisional revolutionary government as deputy defense minister.
Khomeini appointed Khamenei to the post of Tehran's Friday prayers Imam in 1980, after the resignation of Hussein-Ali Montazeri from the post. He was briefly the vice Minister of National Defence from late July to 6 November 1979 and as a supervisor of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards. He also went to the battlefield as a representative of the parliament's defense commission.
Finally, 45 members voted against the leadership council proposal while more than 20 people were in favor of it and the proposal was rejected. After the assembly rejected the idea of a Leadership Council, Khamenei was elected Leader by 60 of the 74 members present with Grand Ayatollah Mohammad-Reza Golpaygani receiving the remaining 14 votes. Although he eventually accepted the post, Khamenei made protestations of his unworthiness, saying "my nomination should make us all cry tears of blood", and debated with the mujtahids of the Assembly.
Education
Ali Khamenei was trained as a cleric in the city of Qom and did not have the traditional religious qualifications for the role of Supreme Leader. However, he has utilized his religious legitimacy effectively to consolidate power.
There have been major protests during Khamenei's reign, including the 1994 Qazvin protests, the 1999 student protests, the 2009 presidential election protests, the 2011–2012 protests, the 2017–2018 protests, the 2018–2019 general strikes and protests, the 2019–2020 protests, the 2021–2022 protests, and the Mahsa Amini protests. Journalists, bloggers, and others have been imprisoned in Iran for insulting Khamenei, often in conjunction with blasphemy charges. Their sentences have included lashing and jail time; some have died in custody. Regarding the nuclear program of Iran, Khamenei issued a fatwa in 2003 forbidding the production, stockpiling and use of all kinds of weapons of mass destruction.
Initially, some members of the Assembly of Experts proposed the idea of a leadership council. Various lists were proposed and Khamenei was named in all of them. For instance, a council of three members, Ali Meshkini, Abdul-Karim Mousavi Ardebili and Khamenei, was proposed to lead Iran. According to Rafsanjani, he and Khamenei were against the proposal, while Ayatollah Haeri Shirazi and Ayatollah Ebrahim Amini were in favor of it. Supporters of the council proposal believed that having a council would produce a higher degree of unity in society and more positive characteristics would be found in a council. In contrast, the opposers believed that an individual leader was more efficient according to past experiences in the case of the Judiciary Council.
Khamenei issues decrees and makes the final decisions on the economy, environment, foreign policy and everything else in Iran. Khamenei regularly meets with the president, cabinet members, head and officials of the judiciary branch, parliamentarians, among others, and tells them what to do. Khamenei has also fired and reinstated presidential cabinet appointments. Khamenei meets with foreign dignitaries, however, he does not travel overseas; if anyone wishes to see him, that person must travel to Iran. Apart from his time in Najaf as a student, Khamenei traveled to Libya during his time as president.
In 1994, after the death of Grand Ayatollah Mohammad Ali Araki, the Society of Seminary Teachers of Qom declared Khamenei a new marja. Several ayatollahs, however, declined to recognize him as such. Some of those dissidents clerics included Mohammad Shirazi, Hossein-Ali Montazeri, Hassan Tabatabai-Qomi, and Yasubedin Rastegar Jooybari. In 1997, for example, Montazeri "questioned the powers of the Leader" and was subsequently punished for his comments with the closure of his religious school, an attack on his office in Qom, and a period of house arrest.
