Khomeini was a revolutionary with an air of mystique who built a state from the ground up; Khamenei was a doddering bureaucrat who inherited that state and ran it back into the ground. From the crackdown on student reformists in 1999, which killed three people, to the uprising and massacres this year, which killed hundreds, Khamenei gradually muscled out his rivals within the Islamic Republic and pushed Iranians to hate that republic. Even as Khamenei's palace lay in ruins and the leader incommunicado, the Iranian military immediately fired back at U.S. forces and partners across the Middle East, and began attempting to blockade oil shipping.
Author: Matthew Petti
Published at: 2026-02-28 22:19:26
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