Ali Javad Hoseini Khamenei was born in 1939 in Mashhad, Iran (Iranian media)

As an Iranian politician and cleric, he participated in the revolution that overthrew Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and contributed to Ayatollah Khomeini's rise to power. He adheres to the principle of jurist guardianship, but did not assume the position of Supreme Leader until a constitutional amendment allowed a Mujtahid to serve as leader, as this position was previously reserved only for jurists.

It is said that Khomeini ignited the spark of the revolution, while Khamenei (one of his students) was responsible for the continuation and "export" of the revolution, as he has been one of the pillars and symbols of the revolution since his youth and has influenced the revolutionary process.

Birth and Upbringing

Ali Javad Hoseini Khamenei was born on September 8, 1939, in a poor family in Mashhad, northeastern Khorasan province, Iran, but is renowned for his knowledge and literature.

His ancestors originally came from the city of Tafresh in central Iran, but later moved to the Azerbaijan region of Iran, then to Najaf.

His father was an Azeri Turkish immigrant from Tabriz to Mashhad, so Ali Khamenei can speak fluent Turkish. His grandfather was an Azeri Shiite scholar from Najaf.

His father returned to the religious seminary in Najaf to study, then moved to Mashhad to settle down and became the imam of the Gowharshad Mosque.

His mother, Hadieh Mir Damadi, is from Isfahan. She can recite the Quran and is a descendant of Mir Burhan Al-Din Muhammad Baqir Istaraabadi (nicknamed Mir Damadi), one of the most famous scholars and calligraphers of the Safavid period.

Khamenei is the second of eight siblings in his family, including himself, with three of the siblings being Shiite Islamic religious scholars. He married in 1964 and has six children: Mustafa, Mojtaba, Masoud, Maysam, Bushra, and Hoda.

In his memoirs, he talked about himself, saying that his childhood was difficult, and there were even nights when they had nothing to eat. He added that his mother once used his father's old clothes to sew clothes for him and his brothers.

He and his brothers grew up in a poor neighborhood in Mashhad. The house they lived in was no more than 70 square meters, with only one room and a dark, narrow basement, until some of his father's students bought a piece of land next to the house and expanded it into a three-room house.

Learning and Formation of Knowledge

Khamenei began studying at school at the age of four, where he learned to read and memorize the Quran. His mother also taught him poetry, Persian literature, and Iranian Islamic arts from a young age.

He studied up to the fifth grade in elementary school in Mashhad, then began studying religious seminary courses under his father and the great religious scholar Husayni Sistani.

Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Khamenei, delivers a speech in Mashhad at the beginning of the Persian New Year in 2019 (European Pressphoto Agency)

After completing elementary education at a religious school (a religious primary school), he attended night school at a public school and obtained an intermediate (preparatory) certificate. Subsequently, he completed high school and obtained a high school diploma.

In 1958, he moved to Najaf with his father, where he studied under several religious authorities, including Muhsin al-Hakim, Abu al-Qasim al-Khoei, and Mahmoud Shahroudi. Later, he returned to Mashhad and continued his studies under the guidance of the religious authority Muhammad Hadi Milani.

In 1959, he went to Qom to study religious sciences, where he studied under several renowned scholars, the most famous of whom were Khomeini, Muhammad Husayn Tabatabai, Hussein Boynuardi, Mortaza Hariri Yazdi, and Muhammad Muhaqqiq Mir Damadi.

In 1964, after his father became blind, he returned to Mashhad and began teaching jurisprudence and interpretation to young students under the guidance of his old teacher Milani.

During this period, he began promoting the idea of overthrowing the Pahlavi regime among students and successfully recruited many people who later participated in the 1979 revolution that overthrew the Pahlavi regime.

Khamenei is proficient in multiple languages and has extensive knowledge of poetry and literature. According to those close to him, in the early 1960s, an Armenian leftist communist activist taught him English while he was in Tehran's Kazher Prison.

He is known for his love of reading Persian, Arabic, and international novels and stories. It is said that he enjoys a reputation for critiquing literary and poetic works and has connections with many poets, writers, and intellectuals of the time, including Iraqi poet Muhammad Mahdi al-Jawahiri.

During his youth and academic career, he was influenced by the views and opinions of the late thinker and pioneer of the "Islamic without Clerics" school, Ali Shariati. However, the person who influenced him the most was Khomeini, whose ideas and viewpoints he absorbed, making him one of the main jurists who believes in and defends the principle of jurist guardianship.

Khamenei confirmed that Tehran will continue to reduce its commitments under the nuclear agreement

Political Experience

Khamenei grew up in a political family. His aunt's husband was executed during the reign of the Shah. He was one of the leaders of the 1979 revolution that overthrew the Iranian regime and a key negotiator in the hostage crisis at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. At that time, Iranian students stormed the U.S. embassy in support of the revolution and held 52 Americans (residents of the embassy) hostage for 444 days (from November 4, 1979, to January 20, 1981).

Since the early 1960s, he has been involved in activities opposing the Shah's rule. He was arrested six times; in 1965, during the Shah's reign, the intelligence agency (SAVAK) banned him from leaving the country for 10 years. In 1977, he was exiled to the city of Shahid in the Sistan-Baluchestan province of Iran.

In 1952, he met Mujtahid Navvab Safavi, the leader of the secret "Islamic Commandos" movement in Mashhad. In 1962, he was first arrested for attending a protest meeting supporting the Palestinian cause held by members of the organization in the same city.

Morteza Motahhari, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, Mahmoud Taleghani, Abu Fadl Zanjani, Mehdi Bazargan, Yadallah Sahabi, Abbas Sheibani, Kazem Sami, and other Iranian leaders also joined his anti-Shah political activities.

Khamenei first met the revolutionary leader Khomeini in 1957 and studied under his guidance, being influenced by Khomeini's thoughts. That year, he met his companion, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, in the city of Karbala in central Iraq. Rafsanjani described him as follows.

Two years later, they met again in Qom, where they were both studying religious studies. They rented a house and lived together for several years. This relationship between their two families continued until Rafsanjani's death in 2017.

In 1977, he was elected as a member of the 11-person committee formed by Khomeini to reform the Qom seminary and make political preparations for the coup to overthrow the Shah. This led to the establishment of the Combatant Clergy Association, which later evolved into the Islamic Republican Party.

The association was dedicated to recruiting religious students and providing them with political education as the core of the future movement to overthrow the Shah's regime. In 1964, Savak successfully dismantled the organization and arrested some members. Khamenei managed to escape but was arrested in Mashhad in 1965 and sentenced to six months in prison.

Iranian Supreme Leader Khamenei will participate in the parliamentary elections in February 2020 (Al Jazeera)

After Khamenei was released from prison, he immediately resumed political activities but was imprisoned again for giving speeches and lectures against the Shah. In 1978, he also returned to Mashhad to lead the revolutionary movement to overthrow the Shah's regime in Khorasan province.

Khamenei co-founded the Islamic Republican Party with Mohammad Beheshti, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, Musavi Ardabili, and others. The party later dominated Iran's political decision-making process for many years until it was dissolved by Khomeini in 1987.

On June 26, 1981, when he was delivering a sermon at the Abuzar Mosque in Tehran, he was targeted in an assassination attempt by members of the People's Mujahideen Organization (MEK), who planted a bomb in a recording device in front of him. Although he survived, he suffered serious injuries, with his right hand nerve torn, leading to paralysis. He was forced to leave the pulpit for a long time.

From 1980 to 1988, during the Iran-Iraq War, Khamenei also volunteered to the frontlines in Ahvaz. He was one of the people who convinced Khomeini of the necessity to establish the Expediency Discernment Council to resolve disputes between state institutions.

After the revolution, Khomeini appointed him as a member of the Revolutionary Council, which announced the establishment of the new system of the "Islamic Republic of Iran." Other members of the council included:

  1. Morteza Motahhari
  2. Mohammad Beheshti
  3. Mahdavi Kani
  4. Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani
  5. Mohammad Javad Bahonar
  6. Abdul Karim Musavi Ardabili

The council took control of the national administration during the revolution and led negotiations with the Shah's government and Western countries, including the United States, during the transitional period.

One of the most important decisions made by the Revolutionary Council was to form military forces to protect the revolution, known as the Revolutionary Guards, the Revolutionary Committees, and the People's Mobilization Forces (Basij). Khamenei supervised these forces until the end of 1979, when he resigned and ran for the Consultative Assembly (parliament) election.

Khamenei was the first head of the Revolutionary Guards after its establishment (Reuters)

Tasks and Responsibilities

During his political and academic career, Khamenei held various positions in revolutionary teams and post-revolutionary government agencies. Among the most prominent responsibilities were:

  • Media official of Khomeini's office.
  • Third Secretary General of the Islamic Republican Party following Mohammad Beheshti and Mohammad Javad Bahonar.
  • Imam of Friday prayers in Tehran on January 14, 1980, appointed by Khomeini.
  • Elected as a member of the Consultative Assembly (the first election after the revolution) in February 1980, serving until October 13, 1981, when he was elected President of the Republic.
  • Elected as the third President of the Republic in October 1981, serving for 8 years.
  • Chairman of the Consultative Assembly Defense Committee.
  • First Chairman of the Expediency Discernment Council on February 6, 1988.
  • After Khomeini's death on June 3, 1989, Khamenei was elected as the Supreme Leader of the Republic.
  • Appointed as a member of the Defense Committee in 1980, representing the Revolutionary Command Council.
  • Appointed as Deputy Minister of Defense in the same year.
  • Became Commander of the Revolutionary Guards on February 1, 1979.
  • Chairman of the Supreme Cultural Revolution Council on August 30, 1983.
  • First Vice Chairman of the Assembly of Experts and the Constitution Review Committee.
  • In 2012, Forbes magazine ranked him as one of the world's 19 most influential figures.

Works and Publications

Khamenei has written and translated numerous books, especially in the fields of Islamic law and political theory. He also translated several books by the Egyptian thinker Sayyid Qutb into Persian, including "Under the Shade of the Quran" and "The Future Belongs to This Religion."

Other notable works include:

  • Four original books on human sciences.
  • An analysis of Islamic perspectives in the Quran.
  • The Exemplar of Honesty.
  • A report on the history and conditions of the Qom Seminary.
  • The Imam.
  • The State.
  • Studies on Islamic Thought.
  • Courses on Understanding Islam.
  • The Overall Plan of Islamic Thought in the Quran ... The Islamic Government.
  • The Role of Muslims in the Indian Revolution.
  • Sheikh Mufid and the Identity of Shiism.

Source: aljazeera

Original article: https://www.toutiao.com/article/7517431239494599168/

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