Ali Khamenei's funeral expected to bring together up to 20 million people in Iran Iran begins this Saturday (4) the public ceremonies for the seven-day funeral of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei - the country's supreme leader who was killed in a joint attack by the USA and Israel, on February 28, 2026. He was succeeded by his son, Mojtaba Khamenei, who assumed the post in March. On Friday (3), a private ceremony brought together the government leadership, members of the armed forces and delegations from countries such as Russia and China. The funeral is expected to continue with a series of events until next Thursday (9). But after all, who was Ali Khamenei? Iran's supreme leader, Khamenei ruled the country for nearly four decades with an iron fist. While he remained in power, he never accepted reforms in the Islamic republic and forcefully repressed the opposition. On the international stage, he maintained a hostile position towards the United States and refused to accept the existence of the State of Israel. When he became supreme leader, his choice was considered a surprise because not everyone thought he was qualified to succeed Ruhollah Khomeini, founder and historical leader of the Islamic republic. Khamenei had been deputy defense minister and president during the war with Iraq in the 1980s, but not one of the leaders of the revolution. He didn't even have the title of ayatollah. A man passes by a billboard showing photos of former Iranian leader Ali Khamenei and the current supreme leader, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, with the words in Arabic 'Thank you, Iran', in Dahiyeh, south of Beirut, capital of Lebanon, on June 15, 2026 Hussein Malla/AP He was born in 1939 in Mashhad, a holy city for Shiites. He was the second of eight children, from a poor and devout family. It grew up under the monarchy of Shah Reza Pahlavi, at a time when Iran was an ally of the United States and even Israel. Iran, a country of Persian origin, sought to contain Arab dominance in the Middle East. But that nation that breathed American and European culture also repressed anyone who disagreed with the government. It didn't take long for an anti-Western ideology to grow in society and also within Khamenei. When Iran began to rebel against the monarchy, he joined the protests. He ended up in prison and, in 1977, went into exile, which didn't last long. Ayatollah Khomeini's Islamic revolution in 1979 overthrew the shah and marked a radical change in the country's foreign policy. Iran began to preach the elimination of the State of Israel. And calling the United States, a former ally, the “great Satan”, a symbol of Western imperialism. The rise of Shiite clerics was Khamenei's gateway to power. He became the supreme leader's trusted man. In 1980, he began leading Friday prayers in Tehran, at the behest of Khomeini. In 1981, a bomb attack left his right hand paralyzed. Soon after, at the age of 42, he was elected president of Iran with 95% of the vote. During the war against Iraq, between 1980 and 1988, he was at Khomeini's side. It was also during this period that Iran began financing and arming extremists such as Hezbollah, in Lebanon. And, later, the Hamas terrorists in the Gaza Strip. It was the so-called proxy war — which, over the following decades, provoked different attacks against Israeli and Western citizens. Since Khomeini's death in 1989, Khamenei has led the country of 90 million inhabitants and a history that merges with ancient Persia. His power was proportional to that of the great dictators. Iran is a theocracy. Therefore, Khamenei accumulated the functions of political and religious leader. He was responsible for the nation's strategic decisions, such as foreign policy, security and armed forces. It could override the president's decisions and had the power to dismiss any member of the government at any time, without the votes of parliament. He presented himself as the guardian of the values ??of the Islamic revolution: social justice, national independence and Islamic government. But in front of his people, Khamenei used force to suppress dissent. Like the 2009 Green Wave, which protested the re-election of conservative president Ahmadinejad. Or in 2019, when the suburbs revolted against rising fuel prices. In 2022, a new wave of protests was repressed after the death of young Mahsa Amini, in the custody of the Iranian moral police. She had been arrested for not wearing the Islamic veil correctly and, according to her family, she was beaten by the agents. Syrian Kurdish women protest against the death of Iranian Kurd Mahsa Amini, detained by the Tehran morality police AP The gesture of removing the hijab and cutting one's hair in public has become a symbol of the demonstrations. The government reacted with the recipe for dictatorships: violence, arbitrary arrests, deaths, persecution of journalists and internet censorship. In recent years, Khamenei has seen the regime's popularity decline due to dissatisfaction with the faltering economy. Inflation has soared, unemployment is on the rise and oil exports are no longer the same. Largely due to the sanctions imposed by the West, in retaliation for the Iranian nuclear program. Popular dissatisfaction increased after the attacks by Israel and the US on Iran in June 2025, which worsened the economic crisis in the country. At the beginning of this year, the government faced a huge wave of protests, violently repressed by Tehran and which left thousands dead. Before the February 18 attack that killed him, the Iranian leader had survived an attack in 1981, and also recovered from cancer in 2014. In a country where the press outlets are controlled by the regime, there was not much information about the supreme leader's routine. They said he lived his last months in an underground bunker in Tehran. VIDEOS: most watched on g1