Regional

Iran’s Ali Khamenei, who based iron rule on fiery hostility to US and Israel, dies at 86

Ali Khamenei was born in Mashhad, northeast Iran, in April 1939. His religious commitment was clear when he became a cleric at the age of 11. He studied in Iraq and in Qom, Iran’s religious capital.

Published

6 months ago

March 1, 2026

Ariana News

The 36-year rule of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei built Iran into a powerful anti-U.S. force, spreading its military sway across the Middle East, while using an iron fist to crush repeated unrest at home, Reuters reported.

He was killed on Saturday, aged 86, Iranian state media announced, in air strikes by Israel and the U.S. that pulverised his central Tehran compound, after decades of efforts to resolve the dispute over Iran’s nuclear program diplomatically failed.

At first dismissed as weak and indecisive, Khamenei seemed an unlikely choice for supreme leader after the death of the charismatic Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who founded the Islamic Republic of Iran. But Khamenei’s rise to the pinnacle of the country’s power structure afforded him a tight grip over the nation’s affairs.

Khamenei was “an accident of history” who went from “a weak president to an initially weak supreme leader to one of the five most powerful Iranians of the last 100 years”, Karim Sadjadpour at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace told Reuters.

The ayatollah criticised Washington throughout his rule, continuing to deploy barbs after the start of Donald Trump’s second term as U.S. president in 2025.

As a new wave of protests spread through Iran, with slogans such as “Death to the dictator”, and as Trump threatened to intervene, Khamenei vowed in January that the country would not “yield to the enemy”.

The comment was typical of the ferociously anti-Western Khamenei, in office since 1989.

By maintaining the hardline stance of Khomeini, the Republic’s first supreme leader, Khamenei quashed the ambitions of a succession of independent-minded elected presidents who sought more open policies at home and abroad.

In the process, he ensured Iran’s isolation, critics say.

Khamenei long denied that Iran’s nuclear programme was aimed at producing an atomic weapon, as the West contended. In 2015 he cautiously supported a nuclear deal between world powers and the government of pragmatist President Hassan Rouhani that curbed the country’s nuclear programme in return for sanctions relief. The hard-won accord resulted in a partial lifting of Iran’s economic and political isolation, read the report.

But Khamenei’s hostility toward the U.S. was undimmed, intensifying in 2018 when Trump’s first administration withdrew from the nuclear agreement and reimposed sanctions to choke Iran’s oil and shipping industries.

Following the U.S. withdrawal, Khamenei sided with hardline supporters who criticised Rouhani’s policy of appeasement towards the West.

As Trump pressed Iran to agree to a new nuclear deal in 2025, Khamenei condemned “the rude and arrogant leaders of America”. “Who are you to decide whether Iran should have enrichment?” he asked.

Khamenei often denounced “the Great Satan” in speeches, reassuring hardliners for whom anti-U.S. sentiment was at the heart of the 1979 revolution, which forced the last shah of Iran into exile.

Iran saw major student-led protests in 1999 and 2002. But Khamenei’s authority was put to the test more profoundly in 2009, when the contested results of a presidential election that he had validated ignited violent street unrest, stoking a crisis of legitimacy that lingered until his death.

In 2022, Khamenei cracked down on protesters enraged by the death of Iranian-Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini, 22, who died in the custody of morality police in September of that year.

Faced with some of the most intense turmoil since the revolution, Khamenei blamed Western enemies then resorted to the hanging of protesters and the display of their bodies, suspended from cranes, after months of unrest.

As supreme leader, Khamenei’s word was law. He inherited enormous powers, including command of the armed forces and the authority to appoint many senior figures, among them the heads of the judiciary, security agencies and state radio and television.

He appointed allies as commanders of the elite Revolutionary Guards.

As the final authority in Iran’s complex system of clerical rule and limited democracy, Khamenei long sought to ensure that no group, even among his closest allies, mustered enough power to challenge him and his anti-U.S. stance.

Scholars outside Iran painted a picture of a secretive ideologue fearful of betrayal – an anxiety fuelled by an assassination attempt in 1981 that paralysed his right arm.

International organisations and activists repeatedly criticised violations of human rights in Iran. Tehran said it has the best human rights record in the Muslim world.

His father, a religious scholar of ethnic Azeri descent, was a traditionalist cleric opposed to mixing religion and politics. In contrast, his son embraced the Islamist revolutionary cause.

“He (Khamenei’s father) came across as a modernist or progressive cleric,” said Mahmoud Moradkhani, a nephew who opposes Khamenei’s rule and lives in exile. Unlike his son, “he was not a part of the fundamentalists”, Moradkhani said.

In 1963, Khamenei served the first of many terms in prison when at 24 he was detained for political activities. Later that year he was imprisoned for 10 days in Mashhad, where he underwent severe torture, according to his official biography.

After the shah’s fall, Khamenei took up several posts in the Islamic Republic. As deputy minister of defence, he became close to the military and was a key figure in the 1980-88 war with neighbouring Iraq, which claimed an estimated total of one million lives.

A skilled orator, he was appointed by Khomeini as a Friday prayer leader in Tehran.

There were questions about his rapid, unprecedented rise. He won the presidency with Khomeini’s support – the first cleric in the post – and was a surprise choice as Khomeini’s successor, given that he lacked both Khomeini’s popular appeal and superior clerical credentials, Reuters reported.

His ties to the powerful Guards paid off in 2009. That year, the force crushed protests after President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won re-election amid opposition accusations of vote fraud.

He also presided over a vast financial empire through Setad, an organisation founded by Khomeini but expanded hugely under Khamenei, with assets worth tens of billions of dollars.

Khamenei expanded Iranian influence in the region, empowering Shi’ite militias in Iraq and Lebanon, and propping up then-President Bashar al-Assad by deploying thousands of soldiers to Syria.

He spent billions over four decades on these allies – the “Axis of Resistance”, which also included Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist group, and Yemen’s Houthis – to oppose Israeli and U.S. power in the Middle East.

But in 2024 Khamenei saw these alliances unravel, and Iran’s regional influence shrivel, with the ousting of Assad and a series of defeats inflicted by Israel on Hezbollah in Lebanon and on Hamas in Gaza, including the killing of their leaders.

Under Khamenei’s rule, Iran and Israel fought a shadow war for years, with Israel assassinating Tehran’s nuclear scientists and Revolutionary Guard commanders.

It exploded into the open during Israel’s war on Hamas in Gaza from 2023. In April 2024, Iran fired hundreds of missiles and drones at Israel after it bombed Tehran’s embassy compound in Damascus. Israel struck Iranian soil in response.

But that was only a prelude to June 2025, when Israel’s military unleashed hundreds of fighter jets to strike Iranian nuclear and military targets as well as senior personnel. The surprise attack provoked a barrage of missiles in both directions, transforming simmering conflict into all-out war. The U.S. joined the air offensive on Iran, which lasted 12 days.

The U.S. and Israel had warned they would strike again if Iran pressed ahead with its nuclear and ballistic missile programmes and, on Saturday, they launched the most ambitious attack on Iranian targets in decades.

Negotiations between U.S. and Iranian officials took place as recently as Thursday, but senior U.S. officials said that Iran had not been willing to give up its ability to enrich uranium, which the Iranians argued they wanted for nuclear energy but U.S. officials said would enable the country to build a nuclear bomb.

On the diplomatic front, Khamenei rejected any normalisation of ties with the United States. He argued that Washington had backed hardline groups like Islamic State to inflame a sectarian war in the region.

Like all Iranian officials, Khamenei denied any intent to develop nuclear weapons and went so far as to issue an Islamic ruling, or fatwa, in the mid-1990s on “production and usage” of nuclear weapons, saying: “It is against our Islamic thoughts.”

He also supported a fatwa issued by Khomeini in 1989, which called on Muslims to kill the Indian-born author Salman Rushdie after the publication of his novel “The Satanic Verses”.

Khamenei’s official website confirmed the ongoing validity of the death edict as recently as 2017. Five years later, Rushdie was stabbed while giving a public lecture in New York. The writer was gravely wounded, but survived. The perpetrator, who was sentenced to 25 years in prison in 2025 for attempted murder, did not testify at the trial.

The late ayatollah leaves an Islamic Republic wrestling with uncertainty amid the attacks from Israel and the United States, as well as growing dissent at home, especially among younger generations.

“I just want to live a peaceful, normal life … Instead, they (the rulers) insist on a nuclear programme, supporting armed groups in the region, and maintaining hostility toward the United States,” Mina, 25, told Reuters by phone from Kuhdasht in the western Lorestan province at the start of 2026, read the report.

“Those policies may have made sense in 1979, but not today,” the jobless university graduate added. “The world has changed.”

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Pakistan warns Iran to rein in Houthis as Riyadh strikes back

Pakistan’s warning to Iran carries significant weight because of its defence pact with Saudi Arabia and Turkey.

Published

1 day ago

September 10, 2026

Ariana News

Pakistan has delivered a Saudi warning to Iran to rein in its Yemeni Houthi allies after they stepped up attacks on the kingdom, in a coordinated effort to prevent the crisis from spiralling, Reuters reported, citing Saudi, Pakistani and Iranian sources.

The Houthis struck an airbase in Khamis Mushait and oil infrastructure in nearby cities ‌on Tuesday, wounding 73 people, in one of the biggest attacks on Saudi Arabia since the start of the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran in February.

Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree said on Wednesday that Saudi warplanes carried out 54 airstrikes across various Yemeni provinces over the past 12 hours, adding that they would “not go unanswered and unpunished”.

The escalating conflict, which represents a second theatre of war to threaten global energy supplies, comes as Iran and the United States wage their biggest declared wave of tit-for-tat attacks on shipping in the Gulf region since their war began.

Pakistan’s warning to Iran carries significant weight because of its defence pact with Saudi Arabia and Turkey.

While officials in Islamabad stressed any military role would be confined to defending Saudi territory, Pakistani Defence Minister Khawaja Asif said attacks spilling into the ⁠kingdom could trigger a joint security arrangement involving Riyadh, Ankara and Islamabad.

“An aggression on one country will be considered an aggression on all three countries,” Asif said on Pakistani TV.

“There is no ambiguity or doubt… Unprovoked aggression or spillover… into Saudi Arabia will definitely make this agreement operational.”

The Pakistani defence ministry, foreign ministry and the military did not respond to a Reuters request for comment.

FEARS OF PROXY WAR TURNING INTO WIDER REGIONAL CRISIS

Pakistan’s intervention, after years of balancing ties with Saudi Arabia and Iran, has underscored the seriousness of the Houthi attacks. The message to Tehran is clear: rein in the Houthis or risk turning a proxy conflict into a broader regional security crisis, the sources said.

A senior regional diplomat said Pakistan had conveyed the message to Iran over the past 24 hours, urging Tehran to use its influence to halt Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia.

A senior Iranian official confirmed that Pakistan conveyed the message to Tehran on Tuesday and Tehran’s response was that “Iran does not control the Houthis”.

However, two Iranian sources said Tehran had told the Houthis last week to carry out attacks on Saudi Arabia. Tehran promised additional funding and weapons, they said, while several Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commanders had travelled to Yemen to help coordinate the attacks.

The regional diplomat said Islamabad was ‌seeking to ⁠restrain the Houthis before the escalation reached a point where Riyadh could press Pakistan to play a more active role in defending it.

“Pakistan has an agreement with Saudi Arabia, but I am hopeful the situation will not reach the point where Pakistan has to practically step in,” the diplomat told Reuters. “It will pursue a diplomatic solution for now.”

PAKISTANI SUPPORT FOR SAUDIS

The Pakistani source said Saudi officials had met senior Pakistani and Turkish military representatives in Riyadh to coordinate their response. The three countries agreed that their troops would not enter Yemen and that any response would be launched from Saudi territory, the source added.

A second Pakistani source said no decision had been made to join retaliatory strikes, stressing that ⁠its military pact with Riyadh was defensive and limited to protecting Saudi territory. Pakistani forces could provide military, technical, ground or air support within Saudi Arabia, but would not take part in combat operations on foreign soil, the source said.

The pressure campaign waged by Iran and the Houthis could have the opposite effect to that intended by Tehran, the regional diplomat said.

By targeting Gulf security in a bid to pressure Washington over its blockade of Iranian ports, Tehran risks driving ⁠Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Turkey and other U.S.-aligned states into closer security coordination rather than fracturing their ties.

TRUMP’S BLOCKADE OF IRAN SET TO CONTINUE

Regional officials also see little sign that Washington is prepared to relent.

President Donald Trump appears committed to maintaining the U.S. blockade until Iran reaches an agreement with Washington, the diplomat said, while Qatar is quietly exploring new proposals aimed at bringing both sides back to negotiations.

Another regional source said Saudi ⁠Arabia’s military response would remain focused on the Houthis rather than Iran itself. Nor do Saudi officials believe Houthi attacks will achieve Tehran’s broader objective of ending the U.S. blockade.

Riyadh is not expected to press Washington to lift the blockade, that source said, stressing that Trump believes sustained economic coercion is the most effective pathway to negotiations.

“The question is how much pain Iran can absorb, and for how long,” the source said. “Trump does not want a military solution. He wants to squeeze them through the blockade.”

Regional

Iran attacks US base in Jordan, ships near Hormuz after tankers sunk

Iran has targeted U.S. assets and allies in the region throughout the war, including in Jordan several times, killing at least two U.S. military personnel during one strike in July.

Published

2 days ago

September 9, 2026

Ariana News

Iran’s Revolutionary Guard said it fired ballistic missiles at a base in Jordan used by the U.S. military and attacked 10 ships on Wednesday, after the U.S. said it had destroyed ‌five Iranian oil tankers, in a sharp escalation of the six-month-old war, Reuters reported.

Increased attacks by both the U.S. and Iran have shattered a month of relative calm, hitting military, shipping and energy assets, sending oil prices surging and drawing in regional allies in recent days.

The Americans said they destroyed five Iranian oil tankers on Tuesday. The U.S. military’s Central Command posted video of the strikes, which it called a response to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) targeting a U.S. Navy warship twice with ballistic missiles over the previous two days. No Americans were harmed, the U.S. said.

“Iran continues to try to hit U.S. naval ships, and for every time they do that or try to do that, they’re going to lose tankers,” U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters ⁠during a visit to Colombia.

Iran then carried out a ballistic missile attack on a base used by U.S. forces near Al Azraq in Jordan, according to an IRGC statement on state media.

Although Iran said its missiles inflicted heavy damage, Jordan said its air defences intercepted 18 of the 20 Iranian missiles, with two falling in unpopulated areas, and that there were no casualties. A U.S. official said Iran’s strikes in Jordan were ineffective and all American troops were accounted for.

The IRGC said on Wednesday it also attacked 10 ships, including two U.S. vessels and eight oil tankers, attempting to cross a “prohibited and unsafe” area of the Strait of Hormuz, a vital energy conduit largely choked off by Iranian attacks.

Iran has targeted U.S. assets and allies in the region throughout the war, including in Jordan several times, killing at least two U.S. military personnel during one strike in July.

Iran has also threatened oil tankers in Kuwaiti and Bahraini ports, according to a statement carried by state media. A maritime security source reported a liquefied natural gas tanker was damaged in the Emirati port of Khor Fakkan, though it was unclear who was responsible.

Oil prices extended gains in early trade on Wednesday with Brent crude nearing $100 a barrel ‌on market ⁠concerns over the disruption of oil tanker traffic in the Strait of Hormuz. Recent attacks by Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthis on top energy producer Saudi Arabia have added to supply concerns, read the report.

On Tuesday, Houthis launched an attack on several cities in Saudi Arabia, further undermining regional stability.

The Houthi attacks wounded 73 people and set oil installations ablaze in what appeared to be a major expansion of the conflict, which began on February 28 with joint U.S.-Israeli attacks on Iran.

The Houthis, who control most of Yemen’s populated areas, including the capital, have further pressured U.S. allies by periodically disrupting shipping on the other side of the Arabian Peninsula, at the entrance to ⁠the Red Sea.

They said they had launched a broad operation deep into Saudi territory, using drones and missiles to strike a Saudi air base in the southern city of Khamis Mushait as well as Saudi state oil company assets in the cities of Abha, Najran and Jazan.

Saudi authorities reported blazes at the sites and said women and children were among the wounded.

Saudi Arabia has led an Arab coalition battling against the Houthis in Yemen for more ⁠than a decade, after the Houthis drove the Yemeni government from the capital. That war had calmed in recent years, but a ceasefire there has broken down.

The wider war in the Gulf has turned into a test of wills between the U.S. and Iran, with each side hoping that economic pressure from competing blockades will force the other to yield.

Washington is trying to increase the flow of oil to ⁠world markets by guiding ships through the Strait of Hormuz, while cutting off Iran’s exports with a blockade, Reuters reported.

Central Command said the tankers it destroyed on Tuesday were part of a shadow network that funds the IRGC and its regional proxies. Iran has long supported what it calls an “Axis of Resistance”, which includes the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, Lebanon’s Hezbollah, Iraqi Shi’ite militias and the Houthis.

Regional

Hormuz traffic dips to lowest since May after US, Iranian strikes on ships

the IRGC navy said on Saturday it targeted three oil tankers travelling unauthorized routes in the strait as well as three additional U.S. vessels in other areas.

Published

4 days ago

September 7, 2026

Ariana News

An average of 10 commodity ships transited the Strait of Hormuz per day over the past 10 days, the lowest since May, according to shipping data on Monday, after U.S. and Iranian ‌strikes on tankers, Reuters reported.

The 10-day moving average was 10 on Sunday, down from more than 15 on Friday and nearly 13 on Saturday, data from analytics firm Kpler found.

Only two vessels passed through the strait on Saturday while six went through on Sunday, mostly using the Iranian route.

U.S. forces struck three Iranian ⁠oil tankers on Saturday, U.S. Central Command said, including one off Kharg Island, Iran’s key oil export hub, following attacks by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps on U.S. warships in the region.

In retaliation, the IRGC navy said on Saturday it targeted three oil tankers travelling unauthorized routes in the strait as well as three additional U.S. vessels in other areas.

The three Iranian tankers were Downy, Stark I and Kylo, also known as Noxen, maritime intelligence firm Marisks said in a note.

The Saturday attacks represented a “major escalation in the maritime conflict”, ‌Marisks said.

“Commercial ⁠tankers are now being deliberately used as instruments of reciprocal economic pressure, substantially weakening the previous distinction between military confrontation and commercial shipping,” it added.

“Risk is therefore assessed as extreme for Iranian/Iran-linked tonnage and materially elevated for U.S.-linked or U.S.-escorted shipping throughout the Strait of ⁠Hormuz and Gulf of Oman.”

There have been 27 projectile strike incidents since July 6, resulting in damage to vessels operating in and around the Strait of Hormuz, the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) ⁠said in its weekly report.

On Sunday, one very large crude carrier and three bulk carriers laden with metals, grains or oilseeds entered the strait, Kpler data showed.

A ⁠tanker carrying refined products loaded from a Saudi port attempted to exit but was turned back, data from LSEG showed.

There has been no VLCC exiting the strait since Wednesday, according to Kpler data.