Ayatollah Khamenei refutes reports that he lives an extravagant lifestyle.
He is the leading cleric in one of the most successful Islamic movements in the world. A man with a poor, unpretentious background, he came to be fluent in both Persian and Arabic and has translated many poems and religious texts.
Ayatollah Ali Hoseyni Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader since 1989, was thought to be a religious man leading by example with an unadorned, pious life.
Then a few weeks ago some former confidants of Khamenei began posting articles and videos presenting evidence that the Ayatollah’s life may be a bit more profligate than he would like his followers to believe, with photos of his various villas contrasted in online slideshows with photos of poor Iranians suffering in a serious economic recession.
Mohsen Makhmalbaf, an exiled Iranian opposition leader, gathered testimony from Khamenei’s former confidants and Iranian intelligence agents, publishing Khamenei’s daily schedule, his personal interests, palaces and business operations, citing the supreme leader’s personal wealth at $30 billion.
The revelations, replete with pipe collections, rings, horses, caviar and flying hospitals, caused such embarrassment to the supreme leader’s image that earlier this week Khamenei felt compelled to publicly deny the accusations that he leads an extravagant life.
"It’s definitely embarrassing to him," Potkin Azarmehr, an Iranian blogger supportive of the Green movement told The Media Line. "This is a man who goes out of his way to portray himself and his family as living a simple lifestyle and who admonishes his political opponents for living lavish lifestyles. If it’s proven that he himself leads an extravagant lifestyle you can imagine how embarrassing it would be to him."
"I think the fact that Khamenei has been forced into a denial suggests he is worried about the number of people who are learning the truth about his riches while others suffer due to the regime’s bad economic management," wrote Ehsan Bakhtiar, a blogger with MidEast Youth.
But Hamid Tehrani, the Iran editor of Global Voices Online and the founder of “Sounds Iranian", argued that Khamenei was not likely to be affected by the accusations.
"I don’t think it will have much affect," he told The Media Line. "Khamenei is always referring to his simple life and for many years there were stories about him being someone who does not run after money like other clerics."
"But his luxury lifestyle doesn’t really matter to people in the face of years of torture and a political crises," Tehrani said. "Most people don’t really think it matters whether Khamenei eats caviar. What matters is the way he governs and how responsible and accountable he is to his people."
Makhmalbaf’s report put Khamenei’s personal wealth at $30 billion, with another $6 billion held by his family. $1.5 billion of the $36 billion is said to be in diamonds, $1 billion is in gold, $1 billion in U.S. dollars and over $18 billion in local currency. The supreme leader is said to hold $10 billion in bank accounts in South Africa, the United Kingdom, Syria, China and Venezuela.
The report claimed that $12 billion of Khamenei’s wealth comes from commissions on oil sales, $2 billion from land, $6 billion from arms deals and $10 billion from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s government, given to Khamenei over the last four years.
"Very few people know the details about his home, family, connections, interests or work habits," Makhmalbaf wrote in his report on the supreme leader. "This excessive secretiveness has been a deliberate choice made by him and his system. By being shrouded in secrecy, he has derived a religious charisma among his followers."
"Khamenei’s catchphrase for the past twenty years has been, ‘Do this, but don’t let the people find out’ or ‘Do that, but make sure no one finds out’," the report read. "Those who hear this phrase know that all the power of the Leader’s Household depends on keeping the people ignorant of the secrets of Mr. Khamenei’s life and the behind-the-curtains activities of the Leader’s office."
Khamenei’s confidants claimed the supreme leader’s regular diet is made up principally of caviar, quail and trout from the Lar river, and that his staff uses a $500,000 device purchased from the U.S. to check the leader’s food for poison.
The supreme leader owns 100 horses worth around $40 million and brings his horses in an Airbus A330 plane when he travels on long trips.
He has a collection of 170 antique canes worth $1.2 million, 120 camel hair cloaks worth about $400,000, at least 300 rings, the most expensive of which is worth $500,000 and boasts the oldest agate in the world and a collection of 200 pipes worth $2 million, the most expensive of which ($300,000) has a gold-plated stem encrusted with jewels.
The supreme leader is said to have an immediate protection team of 200, with another 10,000 guards under his direct control.
"The close guards, who consist of 200 individuals and who witness the trips and the life in the palaces, each possess a home which is worth at least one billion toumans [$1 million]," the report read. "Those who consider Khamenei to be pious and who lead austere lives themselves are not permitted to enter the first ring of guards, lest they become conflicted."
Khamenei is said to own a number of properties and to use all of the deposed Shah’s palaces.
The report alleges that a 5,000-square-meter anti-nuclear protective bunker has been built under Khamenei main residence, at a depth of 60 meters, along with an underground hospital with four doctors on duty 24 hours a day.
Khamenei travels 100 days a year, bringing with him 1,200 guards and an airplane hospital equipped with two operating rooms.
He owns one airbus airplane, two Boeing 707s to carry his family and bodyguards, five Falcons, five helicopters, 17 bullet-proof vehicles and 1,200 other vehicles for his entourage.
The report alleges that Khamenei once had an entire hospital shut down so that his wife Khojasteh could have liposuction performed on her stomach. She apparently has three ladies in waiting and a Korean masseuse.
The report also claimed the supreme leader has suffered from depression for years. Khamenei’s former confidants claimed that the supreme leader’s doctors believe his depression to be the result of the supreme leader’s habit of listening to tapped conversations of Iranians just before he goes to sleep.
"The recordings are divided into three parts: recordings of senior officials, recordings of security officials, and recordings of the people," the report read. "Even the bedrooms of security officials are tapped in order to keep an eye on any possible treachery."
Dr Mehrdad Khonsari, a Senior Research Consultant at the Centre for Arab and Iranian Studies, argued that Khamenei was not personally corrupt.
"I had heard these things but I don’t believe that Khamenei as an individual is a corrupt person," he told The Media Line. "He lives in lavish circumstances but he doesn’t live like Saddam Hussein eating off gold plates and things like that."
"His personal office is much more extensive than his predecessor. Khamenei and I think that his family and the people around him are definitely corrupt and use their position for personal gain," Dr Khonsari said. "But the distinction ought to be made: Khamenei is an illegitimate ruler. He has no right to be in the position he is in, he has destroyed our country and tarnished the reputation of Islam. He is responsible for injustice, murder and threatening international peace and security, but he doesn’t necessarily have to be a thief to be all these things."