According to Arash Azizi, senior fellow at Boston University who specialises in Middle Eastern politics, the “twilight of his rule” has only been “accelerated” by Israel’s attacks.

Who is Ayatollah Ali Khamenei?

While elected officials manage day-to-day affairs, no major policy proceeds without his explicit approval.

Because he lacked the religious credentials of his predecessor Khomeini, he has repeatedly turned to his sophisticated security structure, the IRGC and the Basij — a paramilitary-religious force of hundreds of thousands of volunteers — to snuff out dissent.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has served as Iran’s supreme leader for over three decades. Source: Anadolu / Getty images

Karim Sadjadpour, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where he focuses on Iran and US foreign policy toward the Middle East said “an accident of history” had transformed a “weak president to an initially weak supreme leader to one of the five most powerful Iranians of the last 100 years”.

His power also owes much to the parastatal financial empire known as Setad, worth tens of billions of dollars, which is under Khamenei’s direct control and has grown hugely during his rule.

In 2022, Khamenei was just as ruthless in arresting, imprisoning or sometimes executing protesters enraged by the death of Amini.

Strikes intensify ‘already simmering tensions’

The scale of Israel’s first attacks on Iran last week — which killed key Iranian figures including the army chief and head of the Revolutionary Guards — took the leadership by surprise at a time when it has been on the lookout for any further protests amid economic hardship.