At the top of Iran’s power structure sits the Supreme Leader, ruling with the backing of the so-called Assembly of Experts — an 88-member body, every single one of them a Shia cleric. The Iranian public elects this Assembly, which in turn selects the Supreme Leader, whose choice must then be approved by the Guardian Council, half of whose members are also clerics. It should surprise absolutely no one, then, that the Supreme Leader is, almost by default, a cleric himself. There have been only three Supreme Leaders since the Islamic Republic was founded in 1979.
Which is exactly why the country’s official title is only half accurate. Iran isn’t much of a “republic,” since ordinary citizens don’t have a direct say in who actually governs them. But it is unmistakably “Islamic,” with religious figures embedded in nearly every rung of the state’s leadership. And here’s the twist: nearly all of those clerics — the Assembly of Experts, the Guardian Council, the Supreme Leader himself — trace their education, their mentors, and their entire worldview back to one single place. A holy city called Qom.