Alireza Arafi
Based on Wikipedia: Alireza Arafi
In the summer of 2016, an aging revolutionary guard stood before a gathering of religious scholars in Qom, Iran, and placed the highest office in Iran's Islamic education system into the hands of a sixty-seven-year-old cleric named Alireza Arafi. It was a appointment that surprised many observers—Arafi had never hidden his hardline views, but neither was he a insider darling of the revolutionary establishment. The man who made the selection, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, had chosen someone who represented the core ideology of the Islamic Republic in its most stringent form.
This is the story of how one man rose from the modest origins of a small town in Yazd province to become one of the most powerful religious figures in Iran—a cleric whose influence stretches from the seminaries of Qom to the very fabric of Iranian governance itself.
A Town Boy, A Nation's Cleric
Alireza Arafi was born in 1959 in Maybod, a modest town in Yazd province, into a family of Lak-Kurdish origin. His ancestors, according to his own account, had converted from Zoroastrianism to Islam in the nineteenth century—a conversion that placed him within a lineage of religious transformation that would define his entire career.
His father, Ayatollah Mohammad Ibrahim al-Arafi, was said to be a close friend of Ruhollah Khomeini, though some analysts have cautioned that this friendship may have been exaggerated over time. Young Alireza completed his primary education in Qom, the great center of Shia Islamic learning, where he would eventually become one of its most influential figures.
The seminaries of Qom became his forge. There he learned Arabic and English—languages that would later enable him to engage with both regional scholars and international audiences. He studied mathematics and philosophy under a constellation of professors who shaped his intellectual worldview: Ali Meshkini, Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr, Kazem al-Haeri, Morteza Haeri Yazdi, Mohammad Fazel Lankarani, Hossein Vahid Khorasani, Jawad Tabrizi, Abdollah Javadi-Amoli, Morteza Motahhari, and Mohammad-Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi.
Before the 1979 Iranian Revolution, Arafi was already a preacher and writer—a man whose public profile would only grow larger in the years to come.
The Rise After the Revolution
When Ali Khamenei became Supreme Leader in 1989, something shifted in Iran's religious landscape. A new figure emerged from the shadows of the revolutionary establishment, and Arafi found himself appointed to a series of increasingly prominent positions.
In 1992, at only thirty-three years old, he was named Friday prayer leader of his hometown, Meybod—an appointment considered remarkably early for someone so young in the hierarchy of Iran's religious leadership. It was a stepping stone that would lead to far greater responsibilities.
By 2015, Arafi assumed what would become one of his most visible roles: Friday prayer leader of Qom, the spiritual capital of Shia Iran. The city where millions of pilgrims traveled annually to study under its great masters now had an outspoken hardliner leading its Friday prayers.
The appointment to the Assembly of Experts—the body that selects Iran's Supreme Leader—came in 2015, though not without controversy. Arafi did not participate in the written test required by the Guardian Council for candidacy. Instead, Article III of the Law regulating the Assembly of Experts elections allowed for a discretionary approval by the Supreme Leader to override the Guardian Council's requirements. It was a legal loophole that placed him on the Assembly despite his unconventional pathway.
Head of the Seminaries
In July 2016, Khamenei appointed Alireza Arafi—then fifty-seven years old—as head of Iran's seminaries nationwide. The position gave him control over religious education across the country, an enormous responsibility that touched every Islamic educational institution in Iran.
Three years later, in July 2019, Khamenei appointed him to the twelve-member Guardian Council, a constitutional body responsible for reviewing legislation and supervising elections—including the approval of candidates for public office. The Guardian Council was Iran's gatekeeper, its legal review board, its ideological filter. And now Alireza Arafi sat among those who held veto power over laws and candidate eligibility.
The Interim Leadership Council
In February 2026, following what the source material describes as the assassination of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei during Israeli-United States strikes on Iran, the nation faced an unprecedented constitutional crisis. A three-member Interim Leadership Council was formed to act as the country's paramount leadership until a new supreme leader could be elected.
Arafi joined President Masoud Pezeshkian and Chief Justice Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Eje'i in this role. He became the clerical representative of the council—unlike his colleagues from other branches of government—and was suspected to potentially become its head.
The period between Khamenei's death and the election of Mojtaba Khamenei as the new Supreme Leader saw Arafi govern alongside these other members, holding together the religious and political fabric of the country during a time of extreme crisis.
Al-Mustafa International University
From 2009 to 2018, Arafi served as head of Al-Mustafa International University, an institution described as "a religious educational centre for spreading the ideology of Islamic Republic and spreading Shia Islam."
In his public claims, Arafi stated that in eight years the institute had converted fifty million people to Shia Islam—a figure regarded by many experts as "unbelievable and unachievable." By 2020, he reported around forty thousand non-Iranian seminarians were studying in Iran, with a further eighty thousand students having graduated from Al-Mustafa International University over its history.
The Ideologue
Arafi's views on Islam, particularly Shia Islam, present it as possessing a comprehensive intellectual and civilizational framework capable of responding to modern Western philosophical, cultural, and political thought. In his speeches, he emphasizes what he describes as the moral and spiritual shortcomings of Western modernity—including secularism, liberalism, and materialism.
He argues that Islamic scholarship offers an alternative epistemology and social model grounded in revelation and religious authority.
His criticism extends beyond Western institutions to other religions, particularly Christianity—a stance that places him firmly within the hardline camp of Iranian religious thought.
Arafi is seen as more stringent than Khamenei on cultural issues such as the compulsory hijab, and he advocates full implementation of Shiite Islamic law across all aspects of Iranian society. Following what was described as Khamenei's assassination, Arafi stated in an interview that the war would follow the plan his predecessor designed before his death, ordering that in the case of conflict with the United States and Israel, Iran would cause regional chaos across West Asia to pressure its Gulf neighbors into calling for an end to the attacks on Iran.
A Life in Publications
Having attained the rank of mujtahid—a master of Islamic jurisprudence and philosophy—Arafi has published more than twenty books and articles on these subjects. His scholarly output reflects a lifetime dedicated to the religious scholarship that defines his worldview.
He remains, according to Iran Wire, a "prominent hardline cleric" and is widely considered a "staunch loyalist to the core ideology of the Islamic Republic."
His story—from a boy in Maybod to one of the most influential clerics in Iran's establishment—isn't finished. In the uncertain political environment that followed what sources describe as Khamenei's assassination, Alireza Arafi continues to hold power, influence, and above all, a vision of Iran that few mainstream Western observers can fully comprehend.
In the end, understanding Alireza Arafi requires understanding the world he inhabits: a world where religious authority is indistinguishable from political power, where seminary education shapes national policy, and where the fate of an Islamic republic is written in the language of jurisprudence and divine guidance.