Qom seminary
Iran's largest Shia seminary complex in Qom, training clerics and shaping religious-political authority.
Last refreshed: 1 July 2026 · Appears in 1 active topic
Why did Qom's seminary leadership publicly warn Tehran against the US deal?
Timeline for Qom seminary
Qom clerics draw Tehran's red line
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Iran Conflict 2026What is the Qom Seminary?
Who runs the Qom Seminary?
Why did Qom's seminary leadership criticise the Iran-US deal?
Background
The Qom seminary is Iran's largest Shia hawza, or clerical training centre, founded in 1922 by Grand Ayatollah Abdul-Karim Haeri Yazdi to train Usuli scholars. Its roughly 60 schools train tens of thousands of students, including thousands of foreign nationals from Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere in the Shia world, through a curriculum of jurisprudence, theology, Arabic and Quranic studies that typically takes two decades to complete.
A Seminary Management Council, formed in 1980 by order of Ruhollah Khomeini, oversees educational standards and resource allocation across the schools; it now operates as the Center for Management of Seminaries under Ayatollah Alireza Arafi. The seminary's graduates include Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and former presidents Hassan Rouhani and Ebrahim Raisi, giving it outsized influence over who holds religious and political authority in the Islamic Republic.
On 1 July 2026 the Center for Management of Seminaries said the Iran-US agreement 'does not cover all the demands of the Supreme Leader and the people' and urged officials to walk away from talks if Washington reneges, echoing a similar statement from the Assembly of Experts and giving Tehran's negotiators clerical cover for their public denials at the Doha round.
Did Ali Khamenei study at the Qom Seminary?
