Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini

Ruhollah Mostafavi Musavi Khomeini was born on May 17, 1900 (some sources cite 1902), in Khomein, a town in central Iran. He was the grandson and son of Shia religious scholars. Following the deaths of his mother and aunt in childhood, he was raised by an elder brother. He settled in Qom, the center of Shia scholarship in Iran, around 1922, and spent decades teaching Islamic philosophy, law, and ethics there. He was acclaimed as an Ayatollah in the 1950s and received the higher title of Grand Ayatollah by the early 1960s.¹

Opposition to the Shah and Exile

Khomeini's public profile shifted in the early 1960s when he began delivering speeches condemning the rule of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. He criticized the White Revolution land reforms, what he characterized as the selling of Iranian interests to foreign powers, and the subordination of Islamic law to secular governance. He was arrested in 1963 following an especially provocative speech and briefly jailed. The Shah's government exiled him in 1964; he spent the following years in Najaf, Iraq.¹

In October 1978, Saddam Hussein's government, under pressure from Iran, expelled Khomeini from Iraq. He relocated to Neauphle-le-Chateau, a suburb of Paris, from which his circle distributed audio recordings of his speeches and coordinated the revolutionary movement inside Iran. The combination of labor strikes, mass demonstrations, and military defections in late 1978 forced the Shah to flee on January 16, 1979.²

Khomeini returned to Tehran on February 1, 1979, greeted by an estimated crowd of up to five million people. Within weeks the revolutionary government had consolidated power and declared the Islamic Republic of Iran. He was formally designated Supreme Leader in December 1979 under the Constitution of the Islamic Republic, embodying the principle of velayat-e faqih - guardianship of the jurist - which he had articulated as a theological and political concept across decades of writing.¹

Hostage Crisis and October Surprise

On November 4, 1979, Iranian students seized the American embassy in Tehran and took more than sixty American diplomats and staff hostage. Khomeini endorsed the seizure. The crisis lasted 444 days and consumed the final year of President Jimmy Carter's administration. The hostages were released on January 20, 1981, the day of Ronald Reagan's inauguration - a coincidence that became the basis for the October Surprise theory, which alleged that Reagan campaign officials had secretly negotiated with Khomeini's government to delay the release.²

The Iran-Iraq War, which began with Iraq's invasion in September 1980, provided the context for the subsequent arms channels to Iran that became the Iran-Contra Affair. Iran's need for weapons and spare parts during the war was the lever through which intermediaries including David Kimche, Manucher Ghorbanifar, and others brokered arms transfers in exchange for American hostages held in Lebanon by Iranian-linked groups.¹

Death and Succession

Khomeini died on June 3, 1989, in Tehran. The funeral drew an estimated ten million or more attendees, one of the largest in recorded history. He was succeeded as Supreme Leader by Ali Khamenei. Time magazine had named him its Man of the Year for 1979 following the revolution.¹