Iranian Shīʿite clergyman and politician who served as president of Iran (1981–89) and as that country's rahbar, or leader, from 1989. A religious figure of some significance, Khamenei was generally addressed with the honorific ayatollah.
Khamenei began his advanced religious studies at Qom under the most prominent Shīʿite scholars of the day, including Ruhollah Khomeini. From 1963 he was actively involved in protests against the monarchy, for which he was imprisoned several times by Iran's security services. Khamenei remained closely associated with the exiled Khomeini during this time and immediately after the latter's return to Iran in 1979 was appointed to the Revolutionary Council. After its dissolution he became deputy minister of defense and Khomeini's personal representative on the Supreme Defense Council.
A fiery orator in support of the pro-Khomeini Islamic Republican Party (IRP) and an ardent advocate of the concept of velāyat-e faqīh (governance by the religious jurist), Khamenei was injured in 1981 in one of a series of terrorist bombings that devastated the IRP's upper echelon. Following the death of the secretary-general of the IRP in another such blast later that year, Khamenei was appointed to fill the vacant position and within weeks announced his intention to run for the presidency. He was elected president in October 1981 and reelected in 1985. Although not considered one of Iran's senior clerics—he was then generally accorded the somewhat less lofty title of hojatolislam—Khamenei rose to the position of rahbar following the death of Khomeini in 1989. Khamenei enjoyed a good working relationship with President Hashemi Rafsanjani in the early 1990s, but his relations were strained with reformist President Mohammad Khatami, who was elected in 1997.
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