Ayatollah Ali Khamenei built Iran into a powerful force that spread its military influence across the Middle East during a 36-year reign as supreme leader that ended under a barrage of bombs on Saturday.
Iranian state media announced the 86-year-old's death on Sunday morning.
On Saturday night, the American leaders Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump had crowed about his demise after their countries' air forces had earlier struck targets in Tehran.
"Khamenei, one of the most evil people in History, is dead,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “This is the single greatest chance for the Iranian people to take back their Country.”
He warned Khamenei's successors they would face even more violence if they attempted to avenge his death with strikes on US interests in neighbouring countries.
Ali Hosseini Khamenei was born in Mashhad, northeast Iran, in April 1939 to Javad Khamenei and Khadijeh Mirdamadi (daughter of Hashem Mirdamadi in Mashhad. He was the second of eight children.
His religious commitment was clear when he became a cleric at the age of 11. He studied in Iraq and in Qom, Iran's religious capital.
His father, a religious scholar of ethnic Azeri descent, was a traditionalist cleric opposed to mixing religion and politics. In contrast, his son embraced the Islamist revolutionary cause.
"He [Khamenei's father] came across as a modernist or progressive cleric," said Mahmoud Moradkhani, a nephew who opposes Khamenei's rule and lives in exile. "He was not a part of the fundamentalists."
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In 1963, Khamenei served the first of several prison terms when he was detained for political activities.
Later that year he was jailed for 10 days in Mashhad, where he underwent severe torture, according to his official biography.
After the shah's fall in 1979, Khamenei took up several posts in the Islamic Republic under the first supreme leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
As deputy minister of defence, he became close to the military Guards and was a key figure in the 1980-88 war with neighbouring Iraq, which claimed an estimated total of one million lives.
A skilled orator, Khomeini appointed him as a Friday prayer leader in Tehran.
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He won the presidency in 1981 with Khomeini's support – the first cleric in the post – and was a surprise choice as Khomeini's successor.
"Khamenei was an accident of history who went from a weak president to an initially weak supreme leader to one of the five most powerful Iranians of the last 100 years," said Karim Sadjadpour, a policy analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
As ayatollah, Khamenei criticised the US throughout his rule, continuing the stance of his predecessor.
The position, though, thwarted the ambitions of a succession of independent-minded elected presidents who sought more open policies to reform conditions at home and perceptions of the country from abroad.
Expanding Iran's influence
His control over a vast financial empire founded by Khomeini allowed him to expand Iranian influence in the region, empowering Shi'ite militias in Iraq and Lebanon, and propping up President Bashar al-Assad by deploying thousands of soldiers to Syria.
He spent billions over four decades on these allies – the "Axis of Resistance", which also included Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist group, and Yemen's Houthis – to oppose Israeli and US power in the Middle East.
In 2024, the alliances began to unravel. Assad was ousted and Israel hit at Hezbollah command structures in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza.
In June 2025, Israel's military deployed hundreds of fighter jets to strike at Iranian nuclear and military targets as well as senior military and scientists.
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The surprise attack unleashed a torrent of missiles in both directions. The US joined the air offensive on Iran, which lasted 12 days.
The assaults came amid negotiations to reach a deal over Iran's nuclear programme.
In 2015, Khamenei supported the deal between the government of President Hassan Rouhani and world powers that curbed Iran's nuclear programme in return for fewer sanctions on Iran's oil and shipping industries.
In 2018, two years into Trump's first occupation of the White House, the US withdrew from the nuclear agreement and reimposed sanctions.
Saturday's wave of strikes came, like the attacks in June 2025, as negotiators attempted to cut a deal between Iran and the US over the nuclear programme.
That accord will be at the top of the to-do list for Khamenei's successor as well as how to calm the anti-government protests since December 2025 hat have led to an estimated 20,000 deaths.
Legacy of violent control
Khamenei blamed such unrest on Western-backed agitators. In 2022, he authorised the crackdown on demonstrators enraged by the death of Iranian-Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini, 22, who died in the custody of morality police.
Faced with some of the most intense turmoil since the 1979 revolution, he authorised the hangings of protesters and the display of their bodies, suspended from cranes.
In France, Socialist party chief, Olivier Faure, called on Sunday for the involvement of the United Nations once the fighting has stopped in Iran.
"It is urgent that the transition process be placed under the auspices of the UN in order to prevent chaos from following tyranny," Faure said on social media.
"The executioner Khamenei is dead," he added. "We will not mourn the man who, without hesitation, ordered the shooting of Iran's courageous youth in order to retain his power."
(With newsires)
