Ali Khamenei

Ali Hosseini Khamenei (19 April 1939 - 28 February 2026) served as Iran's second Supreme Leader for 36 years, making him, at his death, the longest-serving head of state in West Asia. Born in Mashhad to a clerical family, he studied Islamic jurisprudence at seminaries in Mashhad and Qom under Ruhollah Khomeini and became politically active in the 1960s and 1970s opposing the rule of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, enduring six arrests and three years of exile; he was a key figure in the 1979 Iranian Revolution and held numerous posts in the newly established Islamic Republic. Following the assassination of president Mohammad-Ali Rajai, Khamenei won the October 1981 presidential election with 97 percent of the vote, becoming the first cleric to hold that office, and served two terms during the Iran-Iraq War, building close ties with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. After Khomeini's death in 1989 the Assembly of Experts elected him supreme leader despite his lacking the religious credentials the constitution required at the time, and the constitution was amended to remove that requirement before he was reconfirmed in August 1989; over more than three decades in the role he consolidated power through loyalist appointments across Iran's major institutions and expanded the country's regional influence through proxy forces and military support for allied movements.