Ayatollah Ali Khamenei India killed in US-Israel strikes, his ancestral roots link back to UP’s Kintoor village. Photo: ANI.
Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was killed in joint airstrikes on Sunday by the US and Israel. The attack has sent the whole of West Asia into chaos, with Iran firing missiles and drones into several countries. Khamenei is deeply revered by Shia Muslims across the world, including India. This has led to widespread protests in several Indian stcities like Srinagar, Leh, Hyderabad, Lucknow and others.
Although Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was born in Mashhad and rose to prominence in post-revolution Iran, his lineage intersects with India in notable ways.
While Ali Khamenei himself had no direct Indian ancestry, the broader clerical lineage associated with Iran’s 1979 revolution traces back to Kintoor. It is a village in Uttar Pradesh’s Barabanki district, approximately 70 kilometres from Lucknow.
The grandfather of Ruhollah Khamenei, Syed Ahmad Musavi Hindi was born in Kintoor village in the early 19th century. Syed Ahmad later migrated to Najaf before settling in Khomeyn, Iran. At the time, Kintoor was an important centre of Shia scholarship in the former kingdom of Oudh. Today, only a handful of Shia families remain in the village.
The Musavi family had originally moved from Nishapur in Iran to India in the early 18th century, settling in Kintoor. Around 1830, Syed Ahmad returned to Iran. That return laid the foundation for the Khamenei lineage that would eventually lead the Islamic Revolution.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s father Ruhollah Khomeini was born in 1902 in Iran and spent his entire life there. He rose through the clerical ranks to lead the 1979 Islamic Revolution and establish the Islamic Republic of Iran. His connection to India was genealogical rather than personal or political.
Following Khomeini’s death in 1989, Iran’s leadership invoked the constitutional mechanism empowering the Assembly of Experts to appoint the Supreme Leader. At the time, Khamenei was serving as Iran’s president and was regarded as a loyal insider of the revolution.
Through this process, Ali Khamenei was selected to assume Iran’s highest religious and political office. He was born in 1939 in Mashhad.
On Monday, the United States military announced that it had completely destroyed the headquarters of Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in Tehran. The strike was described as having “cut off the head of the snake.”
The operation forms part of the ongoing US-Israel campaign, which has killed much of Iran’s top leadership, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Zubair Amin is a Senior Journalist at NewsX with over seven years of experience in reporting and editorial work. He has written for leading national and international publications, including Foreign Policy Magazine, Al Jazeera, The Economic Times, The Indian Express, The Wire, Article 14, Mongabay, News9, among others. His primary focus is on international affairs, with a strong interest in US politics and policy. He also writes on West Asia, Indian polity, and constitutional issues. Zubair tweets at zubaiyr.amin
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