Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed on Saturday in US-Israeli air strikes, was a key figure in Iranian political life for more than 40 years, and the country’s political and religious figurehead since 1989.
During that time, he presided over a nation undergoing significant social and political change, and repositioning itself in the wider world.
Born into a clerical family on 19 April 1939, Khamenei undertook religious training at seminaries in the holy city of Mashhad, as well as Najaf in Iraq.
He returned to Iran and eventually settled in Qom, where he furthered his clerical studies under figures including Ayatollah Hossein Borujerdi and Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who was later to become the supreme leader.
During the 1960s and 1970s, he participated in covert activities against the Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, for which he was arrested and tortured multiple times by the Savak secret police.
