Iran’s Supreme Leader was killed on February 28th, aged 86
Photograph: Polaris/Eyevine
Listen to this story
Your browser does not support the <audio> element.
A cross the decades, Ali Khamenei built up countless reasons for his hatred of the West. They began with a fiery speech he heard at 13, when at school, inveighing against the monarchy that was backed by America and its allies. As a young man he was jailed six times, beaten and tortured by the Shah’s secret police. When the Shah fell in 1979, and the hotheads in Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s new Islamic Republic took American diplomats hostage, it was plain that America would seek to undermine Iran by any means. In the Iran-Iraq war of 1980 America even supported Iraq, ruled by a tyrant, rather than Iran. A decade later, when Ali Khamenei became Supreme Leader himself, attitudes had hardened on both sides. Increasingly, over the next 30 years, he knew he was personally in the Great Satan’s sights.
This did not daunt him. Martyrdom would be sweet; in many ways, he had already courted it. Like Khomeini, his long-term mentor and friend, he had divine right on his side. America led a phalanx of countries that were morally corrupt; but Islam made Iran strong, pure and spiritually protected. It disgusted him to have to deal or negotiate with the West, even through officials. He came to disdain foreign investment, in case it increased “Westoxification” in Iran; during the pandemic he refused to import Western vaccines, because they might bring the virus in.
Only “heroic flexibility” induced him to agree to the nuclear deal with America in 2015. Then, predictably, Donald Trump tore it up and tried, with Israel (the Little Satan) to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities into oblivion. Why trust such people? Why negotiate, when America’s sole purpose was to ensure that Iran had no nuclear power at all? No free nation would behave that way. Besides, when Mr Trump’s body was ashes, eaten by worms and ants, the robust tree of the Islamic Republic would still be standing.
His position as Supreme Leader seemed unassailable, but it had never been his ambition. He was a literary boy, and the books he most enjoyed—“Uncle Tom’s Cabin”, “The Grapes of Wrath” and, especially, Victor Hugo’s “Les Misérables”—were about the struggles of the poor. Growing up as he did, with many siblings in a single room and a damp basement, sometimes subsisting on bread and raisins, he knew that story. He enjoyed music, too, and his mother quoted the poet Hafiz to him. But he was in Mashhad, a sacred city; his father was a religious scholar; so from four years old he was immersed in Islamic studies, eventually in Qom.
They went slowly. By the 1980s he was still a hujjat al-islam, equivalent to a middle-ranking Christian priest. As he was appointed to higher and higher posts—first, by Khomeini, to the presidency, then by Khomeini’s allies to the ultimate position—he did not feel it was his proper place. He, after all, had been the mild cleric sent to wish the American hostages Happy Christmas. But when he was made an ayatollah almost at once, and the constitution amended to overlook his lack of learning, he settled into the role as if born to it. It was as a supreme jurist, wearing the black cap of a direct descendant of Muhammad, that he gazed benignly from billboards and posters across the country. And it was as a great teacher that he preached and wrote books on forgiveness, patience and “101 tips for a happy marriage”, telling Iranians how to live. In short he was everywhere, ruling now by divine authority. His tongue could channel God.
Also, though many had underrated him, he knew how to build up worldly power. He proved adept at playing Iran’s state institutions off against each other—the presidency against parliament and the army against the regime’s most powerful security force, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, whose activities he encouraged. This made him the final arbiter. Besides, whereas Iran’s often-more-moderate presidents had a limit of two consecutive terms, he was appointed for life.
Beneath him, too, he had the Guardian Council, a quango of clerics and lawyers that vetted electoral candidates and, increasingly, disqualified or drove out all but his favourites. Rival ayatollahs and their acolytes were co-opted with government money and jobs. Meanwhile his office vastly expanded, with commissars in all government departments, provinces and military units. A force of over 1m paramilitaries enforced ideological discipline at home. Meanwhile an “axis of resistance”—Hizbullah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, the Houthis in Yemen—carried it abroad.
His business empire was also extraordinary. He might live frugally, receiving visitors in a bare room with one sofa and a few wooden chairs, but he controlled assets worth tens of billions of dollars. Soon after his succession he took over the Shia charities from the government and turned them into vast conglomerates that hoovered up state contracts. He also seized the properties the Shah’s men had abandoned when they fled from the Islamic revolution. The humble cleric from Mashhad had inherited the Earth.
Yet many of his subjects grew to loathe and rise against him. Their troubles were economic, obviously the result of American sanctions, though they added those familiar, tiresome Western tropes of freedom, human rights, dress codes for women. Clearly, foreign enemies had fomented this. So he responded by beating, jailing and shooting, eventually ordering the killing of thousands. An attack by dissident revolutionaries in 1981, which paralysed his right arm, had taught him never to concede. As he said then, he did not need his arm, as long as his brain and tongue worked.
He hoped to leave a legacy. This was not necessarily a dynasty, though he had four sons, all of them clerics. He was thinking more of his “Second Step” of the Islamic revolution, more pious and more energetic. Evidently, his own time was limited. He would be bundled away for safety if or when Iran’s enemies struck. How much more honourable, more deserving of the paradise to come, to drink the pure draught of a martyr’s end. ■
논증 분석
유형: causal
핵심 주장
Ali Khamenei는 반서방 이념과 신성한 권위를 결합하여 35년간 Iran을 절대적으로 통치했으나, 그가 남기려 했던 유산은 내부적 저항과 경제적 실패로 균열을 드러냈다.
논리구조
- 전제: Khamenei의 반서방 감정은 어린 시절부터 형성되었다: Shah의 비밀경찰에 의한 투옥과 고문, United States의 Iraq 지원, Israel과의 갈등 등 일련의 역사적 경험이 그의 세계관을 굳혔다.
- 진단: Khamenei는 이슬람적 순수성과 반서방 이념을 통치의 정당성으로 삼았으며, 서방과의 협상을 굴욕으로 여겨 외국인 투자와 서방 백신 수입까지 거부했다.
- 논거: 2015년 핵합의(JCPOA)는 ‘영웅적 유연성’이라는 예외적 타협이었으나, Donald Trump가 이를 파기하고 Israel과 함께 Iran 핵시설 폭격을 시도하면서 서방 불신이 다시 강화되었다.
- 논거: Khamenei는 본래 문학과 음악을 사랑하는 중간 성직자였으나, Khomeini의 지명과 헌법 개정을 통해 최고지도자 자리에 올랐고, 이후 신성한 권위를 체화하며 통치자로서의 정체성을 완성했다.
- 논거: Khamenei는 대통령·의회·군·Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps(IRGC) 등 국가기관들을 서로 경쟁시켜 자신이 최종 중재자가 되는 구조를 구축했고, Guardian Council을 통해 선거 후보를 통제했다.
- 논거: 그의 권력 기반은 이념을 넘어 경제적이었다: 시아파 자선단체를 인수해 수백억 달러 규모의 기업 제국을 구축했고, Shah 잔당이 남긴 재산을 접수했다.
- 논거: 대외적으로는 Hizbullah, Hamas, Houthi 등 ‘저항의 축(axis of resistance)‘을 통해 지역 영향력을 확장했으며, 국내적으로는 100만 명 이상의 준군사 조직으로 이념적 통제를 유지했다.
- 반론: 미국의 제재로 인한 경제난, 여성 복장 규정 등 자유·인권 문제로 인해 많은 국민이 그에게 등을 돌렸고, 그는 이를 외부 적의 선동으로 규정하며 수천 명을 사살하는 방식으로 대응했다.
- 결론: Khamenei는 이슬람 혁명의 ‘제2단계’를 유산으로 남기길 희망했으나, 그가 꿈꾼 영속적 체제는 내부 저항과 국제적 고립 속에서 흔들리고 있었으며, 그 자신은 순교자적 죽음을 최후의 명예로 여겼다.
결론
Khamenei의 35년 통치는 신성한 권위와 세속 권력의 결합으로 유지되었지만, 경제적 실패와 민중의 저항은 그가 영속하길 바랐던 이슬람 공화국 유산의 취약성을 드러냈다.