With the burial of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, contemporary political discourse will inevitably focus on his geopolitical maneuvering, Iran’s nuclear trajectory, and prolonged confrontation with Western powers. However, an analysis restricted to statecraft overlooks the defining characteristic of his tenure: the systematic institutionalization of state-sanctioned violence.

Khamenei’s legacy is fundamentally defined by the creation of an authoritarian apparatus designed to subordinate the rule of law to regime survival. Yet, paradoxically, his relentless drive to tighten the state’s grip has exposed its deep-seated fragilities, leaving the post-Khamenei establishment weaker and more vulnerable than ever before.

Unlike autocrats who merely inherit established mechanisms of control, Khamenei was a foundational architect of the Iranian regime’s repressive apparatus. His trajectory spans the entirety of the regime’s history, serving sequentially on the Revolutionary Council, as deputy defense minister, a founding member of the Islamic Republican Party, president (1981–1989), and ultimately as supreme leader for nearly four decades. Consequently, no structural separation exists between the state’s human rights violations and Khamenei’s executive authority.