(CNN)  -- Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was once a student revolutionary himself, perhaps not much different from the thousands of protesters who this week have taken to the streets in Iran. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei became a political activist while a religious scholar studying under Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini Khamenei became a political activist while a religious scholar studying under Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, among others, according to his biography on his official Web site. He was part of a circle of clerics who opposed the rule of the shah of Iran, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, and was jailed by the shah's secret police, the Savak, at least six times in the 1960s and 1970s. He says he was tortured in prison before being exiled in 1976, three years before the revolution that deposed the shah.
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Post on Islamic Revolutionary Council may have been career-making
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Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was minister of defense, head of Iran's Revolutionary Guards
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Mir Hossein Moussavi was prime minister when Khamenei was president
"He is not qualified to be an ayatollah," or top-ranking Islamic scholar, she said, saying he had picked up the title by dint of succeeding @placeholder as supreme leader, "like an honorary doctorate."
Khomeini died in 1989, and @placeholder was appointed the next supreme leader.