Description
In this short essay I will disentangle some of the foundations of power that underlie the system of the
Velayat-e faqih. I will show how in the build-up of the post-revolutionary state the nature of power of the
faqih changed from a religious-theological ideal-type to a pragmatist-realist one. If Ayatollah Khomeini
was a revolutionary cleric who brought about sudden and radical change in Iran and beyond, his
successor Khamenei appears as a pragmatist “prefect” of Khomeini’s contested political legacy, whose
foundations of power are by far more sober and formalised than those of the late leader of the Iranian
revolution.
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