Ali khamenei shia or sunni
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Ayatollah Ali Khamenei: Who is Iran's supreme leader and how powerful is he?
Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has the final say on all major policies, serves as commander-in-chief of the armed forces and controls the Revolutionary Guard.
Mr Khamenei was born into a clerical family in 1939 in Iran's second-largest city Mashhad.
He received a religious education there before turning his attention to political activities against the Shah - the country's royal ruler until the 1979 Iranian Revolution.
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Mr Khamenei eventually went into exile in the 1960s, only re-emerging after the Shah was overthrown.
He was a close confidante of the leader who emerged after the revolution - Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini - and Mr Khamenei quickly rose through the ranks of government.
After other key political figures were assassinated - with Mr Khamenei himself targeted in a separate attempt, leaving him paralysed in his right arm - he became president of Iran in an uncontested election.
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Biography
Childhood
Ayatullah Haajj Sayyid Ali Khamenei is the son of the late Ayatullah Sayyid Jawad Husaini Khamenei. He was born in Mashhad on the 17th of July 1939, which coincides with the 28th of Safar 1358 Hijri Qamari (lunar year). He was the second son of his parents, born into the house of Sayyid Jawad who lived a very simple life, like many of the scholars of his time, and it was from him that the family learned to live in a humble manner.
Remembering his life in his father’s home Ayatullah Khamenei says:
"My father was a well known religious scholar who was very pious and a bit of a recluse. We had a difficult life. I remember that sometimes at night we didn’t have anything in the house for dinner. Nevertheless my mother would try to scrape something up and that dinner would be bread- and-raisins."
"My father’s house - the one that I was born in and lived until about the age of four or five - was about a sixty to seventy square meter home located in the poor area of Mashhad. The house only had one room and a gloomy basement. Whene
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Ayatollah Ali Khamenei: Who is Iran's supreme leader - and why does he matter?
Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has been the key figure in Iranian political life for more than 40 years, and the country’s political and religious figurehead since 1989.
During that time he has presided over a nation that has undergone significant social and political change, and repositioned itself in the wider world.
Born into a clerical family on 19 April 1939, he undertook religious training at seminaries in the holy city of Mashhad, as well as Najaf in Iraq.
He returned to Iran and eventually settled in Qom, where he furthered his clerical studies under figures including Ayatollah Hossein Borujerdi and Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who was later to become the supreme leader.
During the 1960s and 1970s he participated in covert activities against the Shah, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, for which he was arrested and tortured multiple times by the SAVAK secret police.
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