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Only a few contemporary political figures embodied the paradox of ideology and power as completely as Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the assassinated Supreme leader of Iran. To admirers, he was the guardian of an Islamic revolution. To critics, the architect of an uncompromising theocracy. Yet beyond these familiar portraits stood a more complex figure: a leader whose worldview fused theological conviction with geopolitical realism, and whose political imagination was shaped as much by literature as by scripture.
However, Khamenei was never merely a cleric, according to the researchers. He was a prolific reader who found intellectual companionship in writers far removed from the seminaries of Qom. He admired Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables and John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, praising both for exposing what he regarded as the moral contradictions of Western political civilisation. As a young man, he reportedly immersed himself in the works of Leo Tolstoy and Jean-Paul Sartre, while translating Kahlil Gibran’s A Tear and a Smile into Persian during an era when literary modernism animated Iran’s intellectual life.
His engagement with the West was therefore never one of simple rejection. He often remarked that Western civilisation was “a combination of beautiful and ugly things,” urging young Iranians to distinguish between cultural achievement and political domination. Great literature, in his view, could coexist with what he considered a deeply flawed civilisational order.
Poetry occupied an equally important place in his intellectual life. Khamenei regularly attended poetry gatherings, commented on both classical and contemporary Persian verse, and occasionally wrote poetry himself. His literary efforts were not widely celebrated, but his patronage reflected a conviction deeply rooted in Persian political culture: that poetry is not merely ornament but a repository of civilisation itself.
His own scholarly output was formidable. Over several decades he authored and compiled more than thirty books spanning Islamic jurisprudence, Qur’anic interpretation, political philosophy, ethics, and history. Among the most influential were An Outline of Islamic Thought in the Quran, an ambitious attempt to construct a coherent Islamic philosophy from Qur’anic principles; Iqbal: Manifestation of the Islamic Spirit, a sustained engagement with Muhammad Iqbal’s vision of Islamic renewal; Palestine, which presented the Palestinian cause as the defining struggle of contemporary Islamic resistance; Cell No. 14, recounting his imprisonment under the Pahlavi monarchy; The Two Hundred and Fifty Year Old Man, a meditation on leadership and political perseverance through the lives of the Shia Imams; and Lessons from the Nahjul Balagha, blending spirituality with reflections on governance and justice.
These writings reveal a consistent ambition: to build not merely a state but an intellectual civilisation capable of resisting Western ideological hegemony.
On India, Russia and China
His view of India reflected this broader civilisational framework. He expressed admiration for figures such as Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, and Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, seeing in India’s anti-colonial movement an assertion of civilisational dignity against imperial power. During meetings with Indian leaders, he frequently praised India’s religious diversity and independent diplomatic tradition.
Yet this admiration coexisted with persistent criticism. He repeatedly condemned India’s policies in Kashmir and occasionally commented on questions concerning Muslim minorities, drawing predictable diplomatic objections from New Delhi. Even amid these disagreements, however, India occupied a distinctive place as an ancient civilisation with the potential to contribute to a multipolar international order no longer defined exclusively by Western power.
If Khamenei’s outlook possessed a central organising principle, it was opposition to hegemony rather than opposition to the West as a cultural entity. He condemned what he saw as the moral decay of Western liberalism while simultaneously acknowledging the enduring achievements of Western philosophy, literature, science, and art. His criticism was directed less at Shakespeare or Hugo than at what he perceived as an international order sustained through military dominance, economic coercion, and cultural universalism.
This distinction explains one of the enduring paradoxes of his leadership. Despite decades of anti-American rhetoric, he ultimately sanctioned negotiations that produced the 2015 nuclear agreement when he judged them necessary for Iran’s national interest. Ideology established the destination; realism often determined the route.
The same logic shaped his relations with Russia and China. Khamenei regarded both as indispensable partners in constructing a world less dependent upon American predominance. Russia offered strategic cooperation in Syria, military technology, and diplomatic support in international institutions. China represented economic resilience through energy partnerships, infrastructure investment, and a model of state-led modernisation unconstrained by liberal political reform.
Yet even these partnerships were conceived instrumentally rather than sentimentally. He consistently warned against dependence on any great power, insisting that Iran preserve strategic autonomy within what he described as the “Axis of Resistance.” His objective was not alignment but balance.
Khamenei understood international politics through the language of civilisation rather than ideology alone. Nations, in his conception, were not simply states pursuing interests, they were historical communities defending inherited identities against competing civilisational projects. Religion, culture, literature, and geopolitics therefore became inseparable elements of a single worldview.
Whether one regards him as a defender of sovereignty or an architect of authoritarianism, Khamenei cannot be understood solely through the vocabulary of revolution or theology. He belonged to a tradition of leaders who interpreted global politics as a contest between civilisations, where culture was as consequential as military power and books mattered almost as much as missiles.
To call him a “civilisational realist” is not to endorse his politics. It is to recognise the intellectual framework through which he interpreted the modern world: one in which power, faith, history, and culture formed a single strategic framework.
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