Who was Iran’s supreme chief? Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s rise to energy defined earlier than US strikes | EUROtoday

Some of the primary strikes on Iran Saturday appeared to hit areas across the places of work of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Smoke might be seen rising from the capital as a part of strikes that Iranian media stated occurred nationwide. It wasn’t instantly clear whether or not the 86-year-old chief was in his places of work when the assault occurred.

The strikes got here after Trump pressured Tehran for a deal to constrain its nuclear program, increase a fleet of American warships within the area because the nation struggles with rising dissent following nationwide protests.

Trump had repeatedly threatened to strike Iran after the Khamenei regime’s lethal crackdown on protesters, with Tehran warning they had been “ready for war” in response to the threats.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry stated Saturday that it might defend its homeland and its Revolutionary Guard stated it launched counterattacks, firing drones and missiles at Israel and strikes geared toward U.S. army installations in Bahrain, Kuwait and Qatar.

Here’s what you should find out about Khamenei.

He reworked the Islamic Republic

When he rose to energy in 1989, Khamenei needed to overcome deep doubts about his authority as he succeeded the chief of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

A low-level cleric on the time, Khamenei did not have his predecessor’s non secular credentials. With his thick glasses and plodding type, he did not have his fiery charisma both.

But Khamenei has dominated thrice longer than the late Khomeini and has formed Iran’s Islamic Republic maybe much more dramatically.

He entrenched the system of rule by the “mullahs,” or Shiite Muslim clerics. That secured his place in the eyes of hardliners as the unquestionable authority — below only that of God.

At the same time, Khamenei built the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard into the dominant force in Iran’s military and internal politics.

The Guard boasts Iran’s most elite military and oversees its ballistic missile program. Its international arm, the Quds Force, pieced together the “Axis of Resistance,” the collection of pro-Iranian proxies stretching from Yemen to Lebanon that for years gave Iran considerable power across the region.

Khamenei also gave the Guard a free hand to build a network of businesses allowing it to dominate Iran’s economy.

In return, the Guard became his loyal shock force.

He fended off domestic challenges

The first major threat to Khamenei’s grip was the reform movement that swept into a parliament majority and the presidency soon after he became supreme leader.

The movement advocated for giving greater power to elected officials – something Khamenei’s hardline supporters feared would lead to dismantling the Islamic Republic system.

Khamenei stymied the reformists by rallying the clerical establishment. Unelected bodies run by the mullahs succeeded in shutting down major reforms and barring reform candidates from running in elections.

The Revolutionary Guard and Iran’s other security agencies crushed waves of protests that followed the failure of the reform movement.

Huge nationwide protests erupted in 2009 over allegations of vote-rigging. Under the weight of sanctions, economic protests broke out in 2017 and 2019. More nationwide protests broke out in 2022 over the death of Mahsa Amini after police detained her for not wearing her mandatory headscarf properly.

Hundreds were killed in crackdowns on the protests, and hundreds more arrested amid reports of detainees tortured to death or raped in prison.

Still, the successive protests showed the strains in Iran’s theocratic system and lay bare widespread resentment of clerical rule, corruption and economic troubles. Trying to defuse anger, authorities often eased enforcement of some of the Islamic Republic’s social restrictions.

He built Iran into a regional power

When Khamenei took power, Iran was just emerging from its long war with Iraq that left the country battered and isolated.

Over the next three decades, Khamenei turned Iran around into an assertive power wielding influence across the Middle East.

One major boost was the US’s 2003 ousting of Saddam Hussein, which eventually brought Iranian-allied Shiite politicians and militias to power in Iraq.

Iraq provided a linchpin in Iran’s Axis of Resistance, grouping Bashar Assad’s Syria, Lebanon’s Hezbollah, the Palestinian militant group Hamas and the Houthi rebels in Yemen. By 2015, the alliance was at its height, putting Iran on Israel’s doorstep.

The past two years brought a dramatic reversal

Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, assault on southern Israel introduced a large Israeli retaliation on the Gaza Strip. It additionally introduced a turnaround in Israeli coverage.

After years of making an attempt to fend off and tamp down Iran’s allies, Israel made crushing them its purpose. Hamas has been crippled, although not eradicated, even at the price of the decimation of Gaza.

Israel has equally sidelined Hezbollah — a minimum of for the second — with weeks of bombardment in Lebanon final yr, together with a dramatic assault with booby-trapped pagers and walkie-talkies that shocked the group.

An even heavier blow to Hezbollah was the autumn in December 2024 of Syria’s Bashar Assad when Sunni rebels marched on the capital and eliminated him from energy. Now, a authorities hostile to Iran and Hezbollah guidelines from Damascus.

In June 2025, the US bombed three Iranian nuclear services. The strike got here in assist of Israel’s 12-day struggle on the Islamic republic in June, though the US reportedly proved unsuccessful in destroying Iran’s alleged nuclear weapon’s programme.

The U.S. and Israel attacked Iran on Saturday, Feb. 28, 2026, in what Trump stated was a large operation to destroy the nation’s army capabilities and get rid of the specter of it making a nuclear weapon.