Celebrated director and Iranian opposition spokesman Mohsen Makhmalbaf laid out his exhaustive evidence of Khamenei's highlife on his personal Web site (a translated version can be read here), after interviewing ex-Intelligence Ministry officials and former Khamenei household employees who have fled abroad.
His sources say that since the early 1980s — Khamenei was president from 1981 to '89 — the supreme leader has gained control of the Iranian economy by granting key positions to family members and close allies. His brother Hassan, for example, oversees the Oil Ministry, a brother-in-law has a monopoly on imports of Sony electrical equipment, and the father of one of his daughters-in-law handles the state's land sales.
Makhmalbaf alleges that Iran's leading man of faith — whom opposition protesters accuse of rigging last summer's re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad — used these connections to siphon off $12 billion in commissions from oil sales, $2 billion from land deals and $6 billion from the arms business. Ahmadinejad has also allegedly handed him $10 billion over the past four years.
The Khamenei clan tops the family fortune with other smart money-making schemes. Communal prayer sessions are held in the supreme leader's house up to four times a week, and five guests are allowed to join in. But being led in prayer by the supreme leader doesn't come cheap: Guests, who Makhmalbaf says are frequently bazaar traders, pay about $500,000 each to take part. At the end of prayers, he claims, the traders receive valuable business tips from the cleric.
Only a small chunk of Khamenei's treasure is sitting in Iranian accounts. Presumably afraid that he'll lose his retirement fund if he were ever ousted in a revolution, the supreme leader has spread the majority of his hoard among foreign banks in Russia, Syria, China, Britain and a host of other countries, according to Makhmalbaf.
But while Khamenei may be a careful saver, he has also splashed his cash on a glut of earthly delights. Makhmalbaf says the cleric's bulging bank balance has allowed him to purchase a private transport fleet — he owns eight planes (including two 140-seater Boeing 707s), five helicopters and more than 1,200 cars — run six palaces, and indulge in several unusual and costly hobbies.
Makhmalbaf's sources say Khamenei has built up a $1.2 million collection of 170 antique canes, including a 170-year-old jewel-encrusted walking stick worth $200,000. And after swapping cigarettes for a tobacco pipe in 1981 (he thought cigarettes looked unpresidential), Khamenei started collecting pipes. He now owns 200 of them, Makhmalbaf says, worth an estimated $2 million.
Iran's supreme leader is not the only totalitarian dictator who has shown a bizarre proclivity for hoarding. Others include:
Kim Jong-Il: The North Korean ruler is rumored to be one of the world's leading cinephiles, with over 20,000 foreign films in his library. His passion for movies is so extreme that in 1978 he organized the kidnapping of respected South Korean director Shin Sang-Ok. After he was captured during a business trip to Hong Kong, Shin was put to work making propaganda films for the North Korean regime.
Josef Stalin: Another mad movie buff, the Russian tyrant loved American westerns starring Clark Gable and John Wayne — possibly because he associated himself with the lone cowboy, delivering justice from the barrel of a gun. He inherited Nazi propaganda guru Joseph Goebbels' extensive film collection in 1945.
Adolf Hitler: In line with his love of all things Germanic, the Nazi leader stuffed his residences with 18th-century Bavarian furniture. Antique dealers in Munich were ordered to keep an eye out for items that would please the Führer.
Saddam Hussein: He wanted to be the strongman of the Arab world, but his tastes were closer to those of a 13-year-old nerd. The Iraqi despot built up a gallery of fantasy paintings featuring oily-torsoed men grappling with serpents and rescuing big-bosomed blondes from trolls and dragons.
What drives dictators to accumulate all this bric-a-brac is unclear. It could be that totalitarian leaders need to be obsessive to grab and cling onto power, and collecting is an inevitable by-product of their maniacal mentality. Alternatively, holding such high levels of authority, and possessing a bottomless purse, might allow them to indulge whims that ordinary citizens simply can't.
But one thing is definite: If Khamenei is eventually overthrown, his fall won't be celebrated only by the Iranian opposition, but also by pipe and cane collectors everywhere.
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