Iran’s Khamenei faces rare challenge as protests shake his long rule

Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has seen off a succession of crises throughout his rule with a mixture of repression and strategic manoeuvring but now could be facing his biggest challenge.

Khamenei, now 86, has dominated Iran for the last three-and-a-half decades since taking on the post for life in 1989 as leader of the Islamic revolution following the death of revolutionary founder Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

He has remained in power after overcoming 1999 student demonstrations, 2009 mass protests sparked by disputed presidential elections, and 2019 demonstrations that were rapidly and brutally suppressed.

He also survived the 2022-2023 “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement sparked by the death in custody of Iranian Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini, who had been arrested for allegedly violating the strict dress code for women.

Khamenei was forced to go into hiding during the 12-day war against Israel in June of 2025, which exposed deep Israeli intelligence penetration of the Islamic republic that led to the killing of key security officials in air strikes.

But he survived the war and, with nationwide protests again shaking the Islamic republic over the last fortnight, he emerged last Friday to give a characteristically defiant speech denouncing the protesters as a “bunch of vandals” backed by the United States and Israel. But even if he may have thwarted the current wave of protests with a crackdown that rights groups say has left thousands dead, his grasp on power is now shakier, analysts say.

‘Public discontent’

Under Khamenei “the system has faced repeated popular challenges to its rule, time and again crushing them with an iron fist and proceeding to govern as poorly as before,” the International Crisis Group said in a report published Wednesday on the protests. “That approach bought it time, but success measured only by the maintenance of coercive power gave the country’s leaders little impetus to address the grievances underlying public discontent.”

Against the background of the constant threat of an Israeli or US strike to eliminate him, Khamenei lives under the tightest security. His relatively infrequent public appearances are never announced in advance or broadcast live, with his speech last Friday defying the protests first shown as a recording on the lunchtime state television news.

As supreme leader he never sets foot outside the country, a precedent set by Khomeini following his triumphant return to Tehran from France in 1979 as the Islamic revolution rocked Iran.

Khamenei’s last known foreign trip was an official visit to North Korea in 1989 as president, where he met Kim Il Sung. There has long been speculation about his health given his age, but there was nothing in his appearance last week — when he spoke steadily and clearly — to fuel any new rumours.

Khamenei’s right arm is always inert. It was partially paralysed following an assassination attempt in 1981 authorities have always blamed on the People’s Mujahedin of Iran (MEK) group, one-time allies of the revolution now outlawed in the country.

‘I am opposed’

Repeatedly arrested under the shah for his anti-imperial activism, Khamenei shortly after the Islamic revolution became Friday prayer leader of Tehran and also served on the frontline during the Iran-Iraq war. He was elected president in 1981 following the assassination of Mohammad Ali Rajai, another attack blamed on the MEK.

During the 1980s, Khomeini’s most likely successor was seen as the senior cleric Ayatollah Hossein Montazeri but the revolutionary leader changed his mind shortly before his death after Montazeri objected to the mass executions of MEK members and other dissidents.

When Khomeini died and the Islamic republic’s top clerical body the Assembly of Experts met, it was Khamenei who they chose as leader. Khamenei famously initially rejected the nomination, putting his head in his hands in a show of despair and declaring, “I am opposed”. But the clerics stood in unison to seal his nomination and his grip on power has not slackened since.

“Everyone knows the Islamic republic came to power with the blood of hundreds of thousands of honourable people, it will not back down in the face of saboteurs,” he said in his response to the protests on Friday in a customary show of defiance.

Khamenei has now worked with six elected presidents, a far less powerful position than supreme leader, including more moderate figures like Mohammad Khatami who were allowed to make stabs at cautious reform and rapprochement with the West.

But in the end, Khamenei has always come down on the side of hardliners and key elements of the system’s hardline ideology — confrontation with the “great Satan” the United States and refusal to recognise the existence of Israel — have remained intact.

He is believed to have six children although only one, Mojtaba has public prominence. He was placed under sanctions by the United States in 2019 and is one of the most powerful backstage figures in Iran.

A family dispute has also caught attention: his sister Badri fell out with her family in the 1980s and fled to Iraq in the war to join her husband, a dissident cleric. Some of their children, including a nephew who is now in France, have become vehement critics.