Ali Khamenei, Iran’s Supreme Leader Who Built a De Facto Military Dictatorship, Killed in U.S.-Israeli Strikes

TheclickspotFeb 28, 2026Read original

The years did not mellow Ali Khamenei. Appointed Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran at age 50, he was the longest serving ruler in the Middle East at the time of his death at 86 on Feb. 28, 2026. The Islamic Republic had been founded by his mentor, Ruhollah Khomeini, the grand ayatollah who, after the 1979 revolution, replaced a monarchy with a theocracy. But it was Khamenei who ruled for three-quarters of the Republic’s existence, transforming it into a de facto military dictatorship.

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Sometimes clothes do make the man. Khamenei wore the turban of a senior Shiite cleric. But the pale plaid kerchief often looped around his neck was favored by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the praetorian force he elevated to near co-ruler status. By the early 2000s, the Guards had consolidated military, political, and economic power so extensively that a prominent Iranian economist remarked, with raised eyebrows, that the only comparison was to National Socialism in 1930s Germany.