Ayatollah Khomeini

Ruhollah Mousavi Khomeini (1902–1989) was a Twelver Shia cleric, jurist, and political theorist whose opposition to the Pahlavi monarchy culminated in the Iranian Revolution of 1979 and the founding of the Islamic Republic of Iran. He held the religious rank of marja' and was popularly addressed as "Imam Khomeini" by his followers.

Khomeini rose to public prominence in 1963 with sermons attacking Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi's "White Revolution" reforms and the extension of legal immunity to American military personnel. Arrested and later exiled in 1964, he spent most of the next fifteen years in Najaf, Iraq, before relocating to Neauphle-le-Château, France, in 1978. From exile he developed and disseminated the doctrine of velāyat-e faqīh (guardianship of the Islamic jurist), articulated in lectures published as Hokumat-e Eslami (Islamic Government, 1970), which argued that in the absence of the Hidden Imam, a qualified jurist should hold political authority.

He returned to Tehran on 1 February 1979, two weeks after the Shah's departure. A March referendum established the Islamic Republic, and the new constitution ratified in December 1979 made Khomeini the country's Rahbar (Supreme Leader) for life, granting him final authority over the armed forces, judiciary, and key state appointments.

His tenure included:

• The US embassy hostage crisis (November 1979 – January 1981), in which 52 American diplomats were held for 444 days.
• The Iran–Iraq War (1980–1988), which he accepted ending via UN Security Council Resolution 598, describing the ceasefire as "drinking the chalice of poison."
• The 1989 fatwa calling for the death of novelist Salman Rushdie over The Satanic Verses, which ruptured Iran–UK relations.

Khomeini died on 3 June 1989 and was succeeded as Supreme Leader by Ali Khamenei. His doctrine remains the constitutional foundation of the Iranian state.