Alireza Arafi Age, Family, Biography » StarsUnfolded

Some Lesser Known Facts About Alireza Arafi

• Alireza Arafi was born and raised in a clerical family that was closely tied to the religious networks that shaped the Islamic Republic in Iran.

• His father, Ayatollah Mohammad Ibrahim Arafi, was a respected preacher and scholar in Meybod.

• In 1969, at the age of 11, Arafi moved to Qom to continue his religious studies under the guidance of senior clerics. Qom is Iran’s main religious centre.

• Over the years, he completed advanced religious training and earned the rank of mujtahid, which allows him to interpret Islamic law independently. He also attended seminary courses, learned Arabic and English, and studied mathematics and philosophy.

• Before the Islamic Revolution, Alireza worked as a preacher and writer.

• During the 1979 Islamic Revolution, he was one of many young clerics in the new Islamic Republic.

• His public profile rose significantly after Ali Khamenei became Supreme Leader in 1989.

• In 1992, at the age of 33, he was named Friday prayer leader of his hometown, Meybod. Additionally, he assumed some other important roles within Iran’s religious and political institutions, including, in 2015, his appointment as Friday prayer leader of Qom.

• From 2009 to 2018, Arafi served as the head of Al-Mustafa International University, a religious educational centre for “spreading the ideology of the Islamic Republic” and “spreading Shia Islam”.

• During his time as head of Al-Mustafa International University, Arafi claimed that in eight years the institute had converted 50 million people to Shia.

• In 2011, Alireza Arafi became a permanent member of the Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution, a group that sets major cultural and educational policy in Iran.

• In 2015, even though Alireza Arafi did not take the written test required by the Guardian Council to run for the 2016 Assembly of Experts, he was still approved in the general elections. This happened because Iranian law allows the Supreme Leader of Iran to personally approve someone, even if they do not meet the Guardian Council’s usual requirements.

• In the 2016 Assembly of Experts election in Tehran, he failed to win a seat but entered the body through a 2021 midterm by-election.

• In July 2016, Ali Khamenei appointed Arafi as the head of Iran’s seminaries nationwide.

• In 2019, he was appointed to the 12-member Guardian Council, a constitutional body that is responsible for reviewing legislation and supervising elections, including the approval of candidates for public office.

• In 2022, Alireza Arafi became a member of the Assembly of Experts, a clerical body that is responsible for choosing the supreme leader in Iran.

• In May 2022, he received Pope Francis in a private audience at the Vatican, a rare gesture of interfaith diplomacy for a senior Iranian cleric.
  

  Alireza Arafi (middle), while presenting a gift to late Pope Francis at the Vatican in 2022

• In the March 2024 Assembly of Experts, Alireza became the top vote-getter in Tehran and later became the Assembly’s second deputy chairman.

• On 28 February 2026, after the assassination of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, during the 2026 Israeli–United States strikes on Iran, Alireza Arafi, alongside President Masoud Pezeshkian and Chief Justice Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Eje’i, was named to a three-member Interim Leadership Council, which will act as the country’s paramount leadership until a new supreme leader is elected. But, being a cleric in a regime that has been led by only a cleric as the supreme leader, he effectively becomes the seniormost.

• Arafi believes that Shia Islam offers a complete system of ideas that can respond to modern Western thought. He often criticizes Western secularism, liberalism, and materialism, saying they lack moral and spiritual depth. He has also expressed criticism of other religions, especially Christianity.

• Alireza Arafi wrote more than 20 books and articles on Islamic jurisprudence and philosophy.