Tag: Guardian Council

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — His image is on bank notes and in textbooks in Iran, often as a black-and-white embodiment of the 1979 Islamic Revolution that swept aside the country’s shah and forever changed the nation. But unlike other countries ruled by family dynasties, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s children and grandchildren have never fully entered politics. Part of the reason lies with Khomeini’s own commandments after becoming Iran’s first supreme leader. His tape-recorded sermons circulated through the country in the days leading up to the shah’s departure, his calls for supporting the poor striking a populist tone among Iran’s struggling masses. His daughter, Zahra Mostafavi, later became politically active, but said in 2006 that her father had told her and other family members: “Do not enter politics while I am alive.” “After his death, we decided not to enter” politics, she said. Khomeini’s family did not stay out of politics for long, in part due to the changes within Iran. Those demands gave birth to Iran’s reformist political movement, which seeks to change Iran’s government from within and grant more political freedoms to its people. His father, Hassan Khomeini, another of Khomeini’s grandsons, was barred by authorities in 2016 from running for seats on Iran’s Assembly of Experts, which can appoint or remove a supreme leader. But fears about political dynasties persist in Iran. Earlier this year, President Hassan Rouhani described the 1979 Islamic Revolution as being aimed at avoiding having a “son to take the throne after the death of father.” Family members of current supreme leader Khamenei have taken a low-key approach to public life.