Iran: Trump har fått USA att visa sitt rätta ansikte

Sayyed Ali Hosseini Khamenei (Persian: سید علی حسینی خامنه‌ای‎‎ pronounced [ʔæˈliː hoseiˈniː xɒːmeneˈʔiː] ; 17 July 1939) is the second and current Supreme Leader of Iran and a Muslim cleric. Ali Khamenei succeeded Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of the Iranian Revolution, after Khomeini's death, being elected as the new Supreme Leader by the Assembly of Experts on 4 June 1989, at age 49. Current Iranian president Hassan Rouhani arranged for Khamenei to get his first major post in the provisional revolutionary government as deputy defense minister. Khamenei also served as the President of Iran from 1981 to 1989. In 2012, 2013, and 2014 Forbes selected him 21st, 23rd, and 19th, respectively, in the list of The World's Most Powerful People. Khamenei is the second longest serving autocrat in the Middle East (after Oman’s Sultan Qaboos) as well as the second longest-serving Iranian leader of the last century, after Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi. Khamenei is a head of state and also chief commander of the armed forces, and is considered the most powerful political authority in Iran. Khamenei issues decrees and makes the final decisions on economy, environment, foreign policy and everything else in Iran. In August 2016, Khamenei directly warned the current president Hassan Rouhani that there should be no deviation from Khamenei's economic policies. Khamenei controls an organization called Setad that was worth at least $95 billion in 2015. Setad gives Khamenei financial independence from parliament and the national budget. Khamenei has control over the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government, as well as the military and media. Over the years, to cement his power base, Khamenei has also developed close relations with the military and security apparatus. He has built a vast bureaucracy inside the government and around his compound Beit Rahbari. All candidates to the Assembly of Experts, the President and the Majlis (Parliament), are vetted by the Guardian Council, whose members are selected directly or indirectly by the Supreme Leader of Iran. There have been also instances when the Guardian Council reversed its ban of particular people after being ordered to do so by Khamenei. Khamenei has also fired and reinstated Presidential cabinet appointments. Iran's Chief Justice Sadeq Larijani, a Khamenei appointee, has warned the president of Iran against voicing opposition to Khamenei, and also stated that it is illegal for the Assembly of Experts to supervise Khamenei. In 2016, Khamenei ordered Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, his former ally with whom his relationship was strained after Ahmadinejad accused his son Mojtaba Khamenei of embezzling from the state treasury, to not run for president again. There have been several major protests during Khamenei's reign, including the 1994 Qazvin Protests, when he ordered the military to open fire on protestors, which led to around 40 people killed and over 400 injured, the Iran student protests, July 1999, 2009 Iranian presidential election protests, when protesters chanted "death to the dictator", and ripped down pictures of Khamenei, as well as the 2011–12 Iranian protests, among others. Khamenei was the victim of an attempted assassination in June 1981 that paralysed his right arm. According to his official website, Khamenei was arrested six times before being sent into exile for three years during Mohammad Reza Pahlavi's reign. Six months after the 2003 invasion of Iraq, which aimed to disarm Iraq of never found weapons of mass destruction, Ali Khamenei issued a fatwa saying that the production, stockpiling, and use of weapons of mass destruction are forbidden. Khamenei is considered above criticism, and Iranians are regularly punished for insulting him.