Khamenei's hidden hand concealed his flaw, and his long-reach of terror - analysis

After speaking, Khamenei sat to answer questions submitted by the young attendees gathered, and a tape recorder was placed on the table in front of him. The device had been brought to the mosque by an individual posing as a journalist, described by Iran’s Mashregh News as “a young man of medium height, curly hair, beard, and checkered coat.”

The blast severely wounded his right arm, which was left paralyzed, and his vocal cords were also damaged, affecting Khamenei’s speech for the rest of his life.

On Saturday morning, Israel and the United States brought Khamenei’s image to a painful and abrupt end.

The killing of Khamenei closes the chapter on one of the most consequential and destructive figures in modern Middle Eastern history. The cleric-cum-revolutionary was the custodian of a regime built on permanent confrontation, both with the “Greater Satan” of the United States and the “Lesser Satan,” Israel.

Unlike his predecessor, Ruhollah Khomeini, who led the Islamic Republic from its inception in 1979 to his death in 1989 and whose authority stemmed from revolutionary charisma and religious stature, Khamenei ruled through the apparatus of the Islamic Republic state.

He was not the most learned cleric, nor the most inspiring orator, despite first serving as president and then, ultimately, becoming supreme leader. What he was, above all, was a system builder.

Over more than three decades as supreme leader, he constructed a parallel state: the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a counterpart military, economic, and ideological empire to Iran’s national institutions (similar to party organizations in Nazi Germany, such as the SS). Intelligence services answered directly to his office, while Iranian media, courts, and clerical institutions fused into a single mechanism of control.

But Khamenei’s regime was not built solely on institutions. He was obsessed with the notion of the ummah, a single, borderless Muslim fraternity locked in an eternal struggle against Western dominance and internal decay. From early in his career, Khamenei tried to portray himself as the guardian of a global Islamic identity that transcended nationalities and sects.

Under Khamenei, the ummah became a justification for the support of international terror, siphoning billions of dollars of Iranian funds to terror groups such as Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis.

Any group willing to fight America or Israel could be brought into the cause.

In Khamenei’s view, Israel was an affront to the Middle East, and it was something to be wiped off the map, an obsession that flowed from his ummah ideology.

Again and again in speeches, he described the “Zionist regime” as a “cancerous tumor,” a “malignant growth” that “must and will be eliminated.” These were not slips of the tongue or moments of revolutionary excess. They were deliberate, repeated statements by a head of state, framed as inevitability rather than incitement.

Up until the 12 Day War of June 2025, Israel was not confronted directly but through what might best be described as the supreme leader’s hidden hand. From Tehran outward, Khamenei oversaw the funneling of billions of dollars to proxy forces designed to strike Israel and Jewish targets far from Iran’s borders. Hezbollah, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and Shi’ite militias in Syria and Iraq all existed to destroy Israel, directed by Tehran.

That hidden hand reached well beyond the Middle East. In Buenos Aires in 1994, a suicide bomber drove into the AMIA Jewish community center, killing 85 people in the deadliest antisemitic attack since the Holocaust before October 7. Argentine prosecutors later accused Iran’s leadership, including Khamenei, of authorizing the operation, carried out by Hezbollah. The supreme leader may not have left traceable fingerprints, but his ideology was writ large over it.

The same logic applied to attacks on Israeli and Jewish targets worldwide, from airline plots and overseas bombings to a campaign of deniable warfare designed to keep Iran’s leadership insulated while others paid the price. There is a list as long as Khamenei’s arm of Iranian involvement in attempted or successful terror plots throughout the world, from Albania and Australia to Kenya and the United States.

Then came October 7.

The Hamas massacre had deeper roots than is imaginable. It was the culmination of decades of Iranian patronage, training, financing, and ideological reinforcement of Hamas. Whether or not Khamenei approved the precise timing, the conviction that Israel is illegitimate and a tumor to be removed was his. October 7 was the most devastating example of Khamenei’s hidden hand in action, and in the end, over two years later, it has led to his demise.

Khamenei’s legacy is also defined by Iranian borders. At home, he spent three decades dismantling whatever remained of the revolution’s original promises.

Elections were stage-managed affairs, with candidates allowed to stand only with his approval. Reformists were permitted to exist as a sham opposition – until they weren’t. And when Iranians took to the streets in 2009, 2017, 2019, and 2022 to protest against the Islamic Republic’s choking atmosphere of repression and financial mismanagement, the regime cracked down hard. The Islamic Republic was held together more by repression than any love from the people.

Khamenei spoke often of history’s judgment, but history has a way of surprising most those who believe themselves untouchable.