islamic-republic

For thirty-seven years, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei held absolute power over Iran — above its presidents, beyond its courts, untouched by the protests that shook his country again and again. He wasn’t a crude dictator. He was something more durable: a man who used the architecture of a republic as a filtering system to make sure real power never moved. On February 28, 2026, US-Israeli airstrikes killed him. But the machine he built is still running. This is the story of how he came to power, how he kept it, and what Iran faces now.