4 hours ago
35
CAIRO -- Iran’s ultimate leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who crushed interior threats repeatedly during much than 3 decades successful power, present faces his greatest challenge yet.
His archenemy, Israel, has secured escaped rein implicit Iran’s skies and is decimating the country’s subject enactment and atomic programme with its punishing aerial campaign. It is besides threatening his life: Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said Khamenei “cannot proceed to exist.”
The 86-year-old person faces a choice. He could escalate Iran's retaliation against Israel and hazard adjacent heavier damage from Israeli bombardment. Or helium could question a diplomatic solution that keeps the U.S. retired of the conflict, and hazard having to springiness up the atomic program helium has enactment astatine the halfway of Iranian argumentation for years.
In a video code Wednesday helium sounded defiant, vowing “the Iranian federation is not 1 to surrender” and informing that if the U.S. steps in, it volition bring “irreparable harm to them.”
Here’s what to cognize astir Khamenei:
When helium roseate to powerfulness successful 1989, Khamenei had to flooded heavy doubts astir his authorization arsenic helium succeeded the person of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. A low-level cleric astatine the time, Khamenei didn't person his predecessor's spiritual credentials. With his heavy glasses and plodding style, helium didn't person his fiery charisma either.
But Khamenei has ruled 3 times longer than the precocious Khomeini and has shaped Iran’s Islamic Republic possibly adjacent much dramatically.
He entrenched the strategy of regularisation by the “mullahs," oregon Shiite Muslim clerics. That secured his spot successful the eyes of hardliners arsenic the unquestionable authorization — beneath lone that of God. At the aforesaid time, Khamenei built the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard into the ascendant unit successful Iran’s subject and interior politics.
The Guard boasts Iran’s astir elite subject and oversees its ballistic rocket program. Its planetary arm, the Quds Force, pieced unneurotic the “Axis of Resistance,” the postulation of pro-Iranian proxies stretching from Yemen to Lebanon that for years gave Iran sizeable powerfulness crossed the region. Khamenei besides gave the Guard a escaped manus to physique a web of businesses allowing it to predominate Iran’s economy.
In return, the Guard became his loyal daze force.
The archetypal large menace to Khamenei’s grip was the betterment question that swept into a parliament bulk and the presidency soon aft helium became ultimate leader. The question advocated for giving greater powerfulness to elected officials – thing Khamenei’s hardline supporters feared would pb to dismantling the Islamic Republic system.
Khamenei stymied the reformists by rallying the clerical establishment. Unelected bodies tally by the mullahs succeeded successful shutting down large reforms and barring betterment candidates from moving successful elections.
The Revolutionary Guard and Iran’s different information agencies crushed waves of protests that followed the nonaccomplishment of the betterment movement. Huge nationwide protests erupted successful 2009 implicit allegations of vote-rigging. Under the value of sanctions, economical protests broke retired successful 2017 and 2019. More nationwide protests broke retired successful 2022 implicit the death of Mahsa Amini aft constabulary detained her for not wearing her mandatory headscarf properly.
Hundreds were killed successful crackdowns connected the protests, and hundreds much arrested amid reports of detainees tortured to decease oregon raped successful prison.
Still, the successive protests showed the strains successful Iran’s theocratic strategy and laic bare wide resentment of clerical rule, corruption and economical troubles. Trying to defuse anger, authorities often eased enforcement of immoderate of the Islamic Republic’s societal restrictions.
When Khamenei took power, Iran was conscionable emerging from its agelong warfare with Iraq that near the state battered and isolated.
Over the adjacent 3 decades, Khamenei turned Iran astir into arsenic assertive powerfulness wielding power crossed the Middle East. One large boost was the U.S.’s 2003 ouster of Saddam Hussein, which yet brought Iranian-allied Shiite politicians and militias to powerfulness successful Iraq.
Iraq provided a linchpin successful Iran’s Axis of Resistance, grouping Bashar Assad’s Syria, Lebanon’s Hezbollah, the Palestinian militant radical Hamas and the Houthi rebels successful Yemen. By 2015, the confederation was astatine its height, putting Iran connected Israel’s doorstep.
Hamas' Oct. 7, 2023, onslaught connected confederate Israel brought a monolithic Israeli retaliation connected the Gaza Strip. It besides brought a turnaround successful Israeli policy. After years of trying to fend disconnected and tamp down Iran's allies, Israel made crushing them it's goal. Hamas has been crippled, though not eliminated, adjacent astatine the outgo of the decimation of Gaza.
Israel has likewise sidelined Hezbollah — astatine slightest for the infinitesimal — with weeks of bombardment successful Lebanon past year, on with a melodramatic onslaught with booby-trapped pagers and walkie-talkies that stunned the group. An adjacent heavier stroke to Hezbollah was the autumn successful December of Syria's Bashar Assad erstwhile Sunni rebels marched connected the superior and removed him from power. Now, a authorities hostile to Iran and Hezbollah rules from Damascus.
Iran's Axis of Resistance is astatine its lowest ebb ever.
English (US) ·