Ali Khamenei is a man of obdurate dogmas and dogged animosities. Since becoming the “Supreme Leader” of Iran some thirty-six years ago, he has played a pivotal role in the Islamic Republic’s every strategic decision. He has rarely missed an opportunity to choose a pathway detrimental to Iran’s national interests, or even to the survival of his own regime. He is tactically nimble, strategically numb, or in the words of the old English proverb, penny wise, pound foolish. The Iranian theocracy finds itself at the weakest moment in its history, and yet Khamenei has been unwilling to admit any error of judgment, any failure or defeat of his policies. Even when he wants to repivot the foundational ideas undergirding his claim to power, he not only does not admit error, he goes on the offensive. His discourse is invariably peppered with attacks on real or imagined “enemies” — from the defiant women of Iran who have been unwilling to accept misogynist laws to America and Israel, which he has labeled respectively “Great Satan” and “Little Satan.” In his regime, financial corruption is the norm and has become the scourge of genuine development. He has absolute control of assets estimated to be more than a hundred billion dollars; and no one, not even his hand-picked parliament, has any oversight over this fortune. The regime’s explanation for its claim to power has been that the Constitutional Revolution of 1907 was a wrong turn in Iranian history, and that the man who had it right was a mullah named Sheikh Fazlollah. He was against constitutional government (Mashruteh) and advocated a government based on Sharia (Mashroue.) So reactionary was his idea that even then the highest Shiite clergy of the time not only admonished him but also issued a fatwa for his death. Now, as Khamenei’s house of cards crumbles, he claims that his despotic regime is actually the embodiment of the ideals of the Constitutional Revolution! He also adds, with no hint of cognitive dissonance, that the Constitutional Revolution itself was a conspiracy of the British. In a move that puts Orwellian doublespeak to shame, Khamenei and his vast ideological apparatus have consistently claimed that his regime defeated “Israeli Zionism” and “American imperialism” in what has come to be called the Twelve Day War. This declaration of victory is of course delusional: it utterly denies the debilitating attacks by Israel on the regime’s proxies and allies in the region, as well as the undeniable structural setbacks to the regime’s military, nuclear, intelligence, and authoritarian apparatus. Understanding why Iran is in its current state requires understanding the vision of Seyyed Ali Khamenei. One must consider his intellectual development and political ascent if we hope to unravel the paradoxes of his person, his persona, and his politics, and the current situation in Iran. Khamenei’s strategic decisions are based on his vision of an ultimate and imminent victory for Islam, and on his hope that the world is near a “historic turn,” one that will herald a global victory of Islam. His aversion to facts and his incurable addiction to dogma and apocalyptic dreams are rooted in this belief, and its accompanying idea that modernity, materialism, Western hegemony, capitalism, socialism, and Zionism have all failed. As the victory of Islam grows near, Khamenei — the self-declared “representative” of the Twelfth Imam, Shiism’s anticipated messiah — conceives of himself as the midwife to this divine fate. Yet beneath this grandiose persona there also lurks an insecure character, ill-at-ease with the position that he has “usurped.” 
The current regime in Iran came to power in the Revolution of 1979. Like other revolutions, the most ruthless and radical organized group — invariably representing a minority of those who rebel — managed to seize power. In the case of the Iranian revolution, the usurpation of the democratic aspirations of the revolution against the Shah was sinister but subtle. That legerdemain culminated in the anointment of Ayatollah Khomeini as the Supreme Leader. Khamenei’s ascent has been a far more brazen usurpation. The first Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini came to power after he — by his own admission — engaged in Tagiyeh. This is a peculiar Shiite precept that allows, indeed requires, the faithful to lie to promote the faith and preserve the faithful. Tagiyeh is sometimes translated as “righteous dissimulation.” In the months before coming to power, from his headquarters in France, Khomeini repeatedly promised democracy in a form inspired by the Fifth Republic. Many Westerners, as well as many of Iran’s dissidents, fell for this cunning performance. Once in power, however, Khomeini created a form of clerical despotism which treated the people of Iran like sheep, bereft of the capacity for governance, stipulating that they required the clergy as their shepherds, or “Guardians.” The policy was particularly brazen because almost a century earlier, during the Constitutional Revolution of 1907-1909, Iranians had won the right to democratic governance and to the constitutional axiom that sovereignty belonged to the people of Iran. The tragedy was that when Khomeini deceptively replaced popular sovereignty with divine ordination, he enjoyed a great measure of popular support. That support — along with his own charisma, the euphoria often accompanying an unfolding revolution, and his promise that only a limited number of top posts would be awarded to the clerics — somehow distracted from the audacity of his power grab. As soon as the romance of revolution wilted and the public (particularly women, whose rights were immediately trampled on by the new regime) realized the calamity that had befallen the country, they began to fight for their lost sovereignty. In the end, Khomeini ruled over the regime he had created for less than a decade. Seyyed Ali Khamenei succeeded him in 1989. His rise to power was even more flagrant. For all his destructive despotism, Ayatollah Khomeini’s rise to the top was the result of the unanimous support of the clerical body of eighty-six men who were empowered by the new constitution to
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