‘Bitter, weak and corrupted’: How Ali Khamenei ruined Iran

**Venetia Rainey** (0:08)
I'm Venetia Rainey, and this is Iran The Latest. It's Saturday, 11th of July, 2026, day 20 of the 60-day deadline to reach a peace deal between the US and Iran. No news today, but a special bonus episode for you.

**SPEAKER_3** (0:24)
A short time ago, the United States military began major combat, operations in Iran.

**SPEAKER_4** (0:31)
Today, President Trump says Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was killed in the attacks.

**SPEAKER_5** (0:42)
The Pentagon is weighing a takeover of that island as a way to force the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz.

**SPEAKER_6** (0:49)
Iran begged for this ceasefire, and we all know it.

**SPEAKER_5** (0:53)
The question before us now is, how much more can we accomplish together? Can we turn over a new leaf?

**SPEAKER_6** (0:58)
Can we change relations in the Middle East permanently?

**Mick Brown** (1:01)
Does anyone really think that someone can tell President Trump what to do? Come on.

**Venetia Rainey** (1:08)
This week has seen the funeral of the late Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei. But who was he? How did he come to be so anti-America and anti-Israel? And how did he shape modern Iran into the rogue nation it is today?
I spoke to Ali Ansari, professor of Iranian history and director of the Institute for Iranian Studies at the University of St Andrews. Here's our conversation. Ali, welcome back on to Iran The Latest. You've spoken previously with Roland on the podcast about the first supreme leader Khamenei and his backstory, the cleric who came back to Iran on the eve of the revolution, how he managed to take hold of this movement that actually could have gone in a lot of different directions.
Dial us back and situate us. Where was Khamenei during the founding of the Islamic Republic? Just give us his brief backstory.

**Ali Ansari** (1:52)
He was active in the revolutionary movement, really, I think, from 63 onwards. He was a follower of Khamenei. He was close friends with Rafsanjani and he was in prison, I think, in the late 70s. Whether how badly treated he was or not, I don't know. I mean, some people exaggerate it, whatever. I'm sure it wasn't great. But the fact is that he had been someone who had obviously been at the front line of fighting for the revolution and then obviously was one of the beneficiaries of it when it happened. But actually in a fairly junior position. He wasn't really at a very senior position. He only became president because all his predecessors were getting murdered. So he then fell into that role.
He was seen as a fairly modest, what we say, a modest individual with a lot to be modest about. That was the view that the people had of him. They didn't take him too seriously. I think fundamentally, if you want to understand his character, how it was developed, it was this bitterness at being dismissed so often, that he was quite pleased to build up that kind of, because he had the last laugh. On a personal point of view, he had the last laugh. I think the country suffered for it, but he had the last laugh vis-a-vis all his rivals within the Iranian system. I mean, he's a classic case. For me, Khamenei is a classic case of generally a weak man who is corrupted by power. I mean, that's basically it. Because when he was brought in to the leadership by his own friend, the then Speaker of the Parliament and someone who was considered to be much more powerful than him actually in the general political landscape, Ali Agrawashimi Rafsanjani, who then became president in 1989, there was a general view that Khamenei was a bit more junior.
He was certainly younger than Rafsanjani. He was seen as a bit more liberal. The key, the thing that singled him out before he became leader was that actually he said that when the Fatwa was issued against Rushdie, he made a public proclamation, actually Khamenei saying, well, if Rushdie apologizes, we can all forgive and forget, which he was then severely rebuked over by Khomeini, who said, don't speak about things you know nothing about.

**Venetia Rainey** (3:50)
So this is the sound of Rushdie, the British, and all further.

**Ali Ansari** (3:53)
So it was for the satanic verses. And yeah, so at the time, there was this sort of view that, oh, Khamenei may take the revolution in a slightly different direction, but Raf Sanjani had played it in such a way that the sort of austerity of the earlier years, you know, the war was now over, there was gonna be a general opening up of the country, you know, the thermidor in the sense of the Islamic revolution was gonna happen.