(TIME) Karim Sadjadpour - Authority over Iran's foreign policy resides not with President Hassan Rouhani but with Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, age 80. A 2013 Reuters investigative report revealed that Khamenei controls a $95 billion financial conglomerate, which he uses as he wishes. Khamenei was delivering a speech on June 27, 1981, in a Tehran mosque, when a bomb hidden in a tape recorder exploded, rendering his right hand no longer functional. The Mujahedin-e-Khalq was blamed for the bomb. Khamenei was made an ayatollah overnight after Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic, died in 1989. A self-described "minor seminarian," he cultivated the support of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), making them the dominant economic force in the theocracy they defend. IRGC enterprises now account for one-third of the Iranian economy.
2019-10-08 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive