Khamenei, Ayatollah Said Ali (1939– )

Iranian Muslim cleric and politician, president of Iran 1981–89 and Supreme Spiritual Leader from 1989. From the early 1960s Khamenei founded the Council of Militant Clerics and was an active supporter of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's movement against Shah Reza Pahlavi. He was arrested in 1963 and detained in prison 1967–69 and 1974–75, before being exiled in 1977. After the revolution in 1979, Khamenei founded the Islamic Republican Party (IRP), which became the ruling party, and served as a Majlis (parliament) deputy, commander of the Revolutionary Guard, and deputy defence minister. Wounded in an assassination attempt in June 1981, four months later he was elected state president. He was re-elected in August 1985, defeating two opponents, but on Khomeini's death in June 1989, resigned to become the country's Supreme Spiritual Leader and was given the religious title of Ayatollah. Somewhat less extreme than his predecessor, Ayatollah Khamenei sought to ‘unfreeze’ relations with the USA and to improve an economy that had been shattered by the 1980–88 Iran–Iraq War.

Born in Mashhad, in Khorasan province in northeast Iran, into a family of Islamic clerics, Khameini studied Islamic theology in An Naja, in Iraq, and at Qom, in Iran (studying under Khomeini).