Ruhollah Khomeini

Ruhollah Khomeini (born September 24, 1902 [see Researcher’s Note], Khomeyn, Iran—died June 3, 1989, Tehrān) was an Iranian Shiʿi cleric who led the revolution that overthrew Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi in 1979 (see Iranian Revolution) and who was Iran’s ultimate political and religious authority for the next 10 years.

• U.S.-Iran Relations: A timeline in betrayal, rhetoric, and bloodshed.

Early life and clerical activism

Khomeini was the grandson and son of mullahs (Shiʿi religious leaders). When he was about five months old, his father was killed on the orders of a local landlord. The young Khomeini was raised by his mother and aunt and then, after their deaths, by his elder brother, Mortaza (later known as Ayatollah Pasandideh). He was educated in various Islamic schools, and about 1922 he settled in the city of Qom, Iran’s intellectual centre for Shiʿi scholarship. He became a prominent scholar there in the 1930s and became known by the name of his hometown, Khomayn (also spelled Khomeyn or Khomen). As a Shiʿi scholar and teacher, Khomeini produced numerous writings on Islamic philosophy, law, and ethics, but it was his outspoken opposition to Iran’s ruler, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, his denunciations of Western influences, and his uncompromising advocacy of Islamic purity that won him his initial following in Iran. In the 1950s he was acclaimed as an ayatollah, a major religious leader, and by the early 1960s he had received the title of grand ayatollah, thereby becoming one of the supreme religious leaders of the Shiʿi community in Iran.

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supreme leader of Iran: Leadership of Ruhollah Khomeini (1979–89)

In the early 1960s the shah suspended the parliament and launched an aggressive modernization program known as the White Revolution, which included increased emancipation of women, reduced religious education, and a populist land reform law that upset the existing aristocracy. The implementation of these policies especially reduced and disenfranchised the powerful influence of the clerical class, but it also widely disaffected Iranian life and society: it harmed rural economies, led to rapid urbanization and Westernization, upended traditional social norms and values, and prompted concerns about democracy and human rights. Thus, opposition to the government united conservative clerics, the secular left, and others, who often found common ground under a banner of Shiʿi identity.

It was at this time that Khomeini became an outspoken critic of the shah’s program, and he inspired antigovernment riots, for which he was imprisoned in 1963. After a year’s imprisonment, Khomeini was forcibly exiled from Iran on November 4, 1964. He eventually settled in the city of Najaf, Iraq’s intellectual counterpart to Qom. It was there that he began formulating and promulgating his theories of velāyat-e faqīh (“guardianship of the jurist”) that would lay the foundations of an Islamic republic in Iran. He cultivated a large following while in exile and established a strong and influential network that positioned him to play a commanding role in the overthrow of the shah.

Leader of the Islamic republic

From the mid-1970s Khomeini’s influence inside Iran grew dramatically, owing to mounting public dissatisfaction with the shah’s regime. Iraq’s ruler, Saddam Hussein, forced Khomeini to leave Iraq on October 6, 1978. Khomeini then settled in Neauphle-le-Château, a suburb of Paris. From there his supporters relayed his tape-recorded messages to an increasingly aroused Iranian populace, and massive demonstrations, strikes, and civil unrest in late 1978 forced the departure of the shah from Iran on January 16, 1979. Khomeini arrived in Tehrān in triumph on February 1, 1979, and was acclaimed as the religious leader of Iran’s revolution. He announced the formation of a new government four days later, and on February 11 the army declared its neutrality. Khomeini returned to Qom as the clerical class worked to establish their power. A national referendum in April showed overwhelming support for the institution of an Islamic republic, and the constitution of the Islamic republic was approved in a referendum in December. Khomeini was named rahbar, Iran’s political and religious leader for life.

Khomeini himself proved unwavering in his determination to transform Iran into a theocratically ruled Islamic state. Iran’s Shiʿi clerics largely took over the formulation of governmental policy, while Khomeini arbitrated between the various revolutionary factions and made final decisions on important matters requiring his personal authority. First his regime took political vengeance, with hundreds of people who had worked for the shah’s regime reportedly executed. The remaining domestic opposition was then suppressed, its members being systematically imprisoned or killed. Iranian women were required to wear the veil, Western music and alcohol were banned, and the punishments prescribed by Islamic law were reinstated.

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The main thrust of Khomeini’s foreign policy was the complete abandonment of the shah’s pro-Western orientation and the adoption of an attitude of unrelenting hostility toward both superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union. In addition, Iran tried to export its brand of Islamic revivalism to neighbouring Muslim countries, particularly among their Shiʿi populations. Khomeini sanctioned Iranian militants’ seizure of the U.S. embassy in Tehrān (November 4, 1979) and their holding of American diplomatic personnel as hostages for more than a year (see Iran hostage crisis). He also refused to countenance a peaceful solution to the Iran-Iraq War, which had begun in 1980 and which he insisted on prolonging in the hope of overthrowing Saddam. Khomeini finally approved a cease-fire in 1988 that effectively ended the war.

Iran’s course of economic development foundered under Khomeini’s rule, and his pursuit of victory in the Iran-Iraq War ultimately proved futile. Khomeini, however, was able to retain his charismatic hold over the Shiʿah in Iran, and he remained the supreme political and religious arbiter in the country until his death. His gold-domed tomb in Tehrān’s Behesht-e Zahrāʾ cemetery became a shrine for his supporters.