Mehdi Khalaji

Mehdi Khalaji is the Libitzky Family Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Born in Qom in 1973, he spent fourteen years training as a Shia cleric in the Qom seminary system, studying under senior marjas before leaving Iran and abandoning the clerical path. His insider formation makes him one of the foremost Western analysts of the Iranian clerical establishment, the marja system, and velayat-e faqih doctrine. He writes extensively on the political economy of the hawza, the role of clerics in regime legitimacy, and the relationship between the Supreme Leader and the senior marjas in Qom. He is also a poet and writer in Persian and has contributed commentary on Iranian domestic politics, the Basij, and post-revolutionary Islamic thought.