ruthless defender of Iran’s revolution with few good choices left

[ad_1] When he appeared in public for the primary time in 5 years in October, Iran’s supreme chief, Ayatollah Ali Hosseini Khamenei, had an uncompromising message. Israel “gained’t final lengthy”, he informed tens of hundreds of supporters at a mosque in Tehran in a Friday sermon.

“We should arise in opposition to the enemy whereas strengthening our unwavering religion,” the 84-year-old informed the gathering.

Days earlier than, Israel had killed Hassan Nasrallah, the veteran secretary common of Hezbollah, with big bombs dropped on the militant Islamist motion’s headquarters in Beirut. The assassination was a private blow to Khamenei, who had recognized Nasrallah for many years.

The Israeli air offensive in opposition to Iran, launched on Friday, is one other such blow. It has prompted extra defiance from Tehran, and a barrage of missiles and drones launched at Tel Aviv, however neither seem more likely to cease the Israeli assaults. Iran’s air defences are apparently ineffective and the coalition of Islamist militias that Khamenei had constructed as much as deter Israel is successfully shattered.

Khamenei now has few good choices – a scenario this cautious, pragmatic, conservative and ruthless revolutionary has at all times sought to keep away from.

Born the son of a minor cleric of modest means within the jap Iranian shrine metropolis on Mashhad, Khamenei took his first steps as a radical within the febrile ambiance of the early Nineteen Sixties. The then shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, had launched a serious reform challenge largely rejected by the nation’s conservative clergy.

As a younger spiritual pupil in Qom, a centre of theology, Khamenei had soaked within the traditions of Shia Islam and the unconventional new considering of the rising chief of the conservative opposition, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. By the late Nineteen Sixties, Khamenei was operating secret missions for Khomeini, who had been exiled, and organising networks of Islamist activism.

Khamenei soaked up different influences too. Although an avowed aficionado of western literature, notably Leo Tolstoy, Victor Hugo and John Steinbeck, the younger activist was steeped within the anti-colonial ideologies of the time and the anti-western sentiment that usually went with them. He met thinkers who sought to meld Marxism and Islamism to create new ideologies, favored works describing the “westoxification” of his nation and translated works by Sayyid Qutb, an Egyptian who would encourage generations of Islamist extremists, into Farsi.

Imprisoned repeatedly by Iran’s feared safety companies, Khamenei was nonetheless ready to participate within the huge protests of 1978 that ultimately satisfied the shah to flee and allowed Khomeini to return. A protege of the implacable cleric, he swiftly rose up the hierarchy of the unconventional regime that seized energy and by 1981, after surviving an assassination try that disadvantaged him of the usage of an arm, he had gained election to the largely ceremonial put up of president.

When Khomeini died in 1989, Khamenei was chosen as his successor, as soon as the structure modified to permit somebody of lesser clerical {qualifications} to tackle the function and with a lot larger powers than earlier than. Khamenei swiftly deployed these to consolidate his management over the sprawling and fragmented equipment of Iran’s post-revolutionary state.

One key energy base was the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the beating activist coronary heart of the brand new regime and a strong army, social and financial drive. However Khamenei, as ever, was cautious to search out different highly effective allies and shoppers too.

Via the Nineteen Nineties, he additional strengthened his grip, eliminating opponents and rewarding these loyal to him. Even poets Khamenei had as soon as professed to admire have been focused by safety companies. Abroad dissidents have been hunted down, and the connection with Hezbollah, which the IRGC had helped discovered within the aftermath of the revolution, was strengthened.

Always he adopted his technique of pragmatically advancing the rigid ideas of the challenge bequeathed him by his late mentor.

When in 1997, Mohammad Khatami, a reformist candidate gained the presidency in a landslide, Khamenei allowed him some freedom of motion however labored arduous and infrequently forcefully to guard the core of the regime and its ideology from any severe problem.

Khamenei didn't, nonetheless, cease Khatami reaching out to Washington in an finally abortive effort to ascertain higher relations within the aftermath of the 9/11 assaults in 2001 and, following Khomenei’s instance, forswore weapons of mass destruction.

However he additionally backed the IRGC’s efforts to bleed US forces in Iraq after their 2003 invasion and lengthen Iranian affect within the neighbouring nation. This marked the additional extension of his technique of counting on proxies to challenge energy throughout the area and deter and threaten Israel, named Little Devil by the revolutionaries in 1979 because the Nice Devil of the US.

Khamenei was sceptical of the nuclear deal painstakingly negotiated by Iranian officers with the US and others, however he didn't oppose its implementation in 2015. Analysts argue over whether or not he has sought to restrain or encourage hardliners within the IRGC who've pushed for Iran to accumulate a bomb.

Successive waves of unrest and reform efforts have been met with surges of vicious repression alongside persevering with harsh remedy of measures focusing on ladies, homosexual folks and spiritual minorities. This, together with deteriorating financial circumstances, have disillusioned many erstwhile supporters of the regime and broadened present unrest.

Abroad, Khamenei selected to speculate closely within the so-called axis of resistance – Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthi motion in Yemen and a motley assortment of Islamic militant militias in Syria and Iraq. This may increasingly have appeared a intelligent tactic however it has collapsed underneath the load of Israeli assaults, whereas Iran’s historic alliance with Damascus was ended with the autumn of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in December.

Dwelling in a compound together with his spouse and youngsters on Palestine Avenue in Tehran, Khamenei has careworn his humble way of life. Some sceptics have doubted whether or not his asceticism is sort of as genuine as introduced, however his fame for modesty, which contrasts with the ostentatious wealth of many different officers, has deflected some well-liked anger.

For greater than three many years in energy, Khamenei has sought to navigate the pressures of conflicting forces inside Iran, to keep away from outright conflict and to protect Khomeini’s legacy – in addition to his personal energy and that of his quick loyalists, in fact.

He's now ailing. Hypothesis over a successor is rife. A protracted profession is drawing to a detailed with an outdated man’s best problem but. The brutal balancing act might quickly be over.