Article 109

Article 109 of Iran's 1979 constitution sets the personal qualifications required of the Supreme Leader: scholarship adequate to perform the functions of a religious jurist, justice and piety befitting leadership of the Islamic community, and sound political and social judgement, prudence, courage and administrative capacity. A 1989 amendment, made as Ayatollah Khomeini manoeuvred Ali Khamenei into the succession, lowered the bar from requiring a marja-e taqlid (the most senior rank of Shia jurist, a source of religious imitation for lay believers) to the vaguer standard of general Islamic scholarship, allowing a mid-ranking cleric to hold the office.

The article sits inside the 1979 constitution's clerical-supremacy structure, alongside Article 107 (defining the Leader's powers) and Article 111 (providing for an interim council on vacancy or incapacity). The Assembly of Experts, an elected body of clerics, holds sole authority to apply Article 109's test and to select, or in theory dismiss, the Leader; its deliberations are confidential and it has never removed a sitting Leader.

Article 109 became a live constitutional dispute in 2026. The Assembly named Mojtaba Khamenei as Iran's third Supreme Leader within days of his father's killing, but he lacks the senior theological credentials and marja status the office has conventionally required , and at least eight Assembly members refused to endorse the appointment on those grounds. By July, a senior marja was brought in to lead prayers beside his father's coffin in his place, a public acknowledgement that Mojtaba's own religious standing does not yet satisfy Article 109 on its own terms .