QOM, IRAN — The Qom Seminary, Iran’s preeminent center of Shi’a Islamic scholarship, commemorated 100 years since its founding with ceremonies that laid bare the depth of its influence on the country’s theocratic regime. Senior regime clerics, led by Assembly of Experts member Ayatollah Madresi Yazdi, lauded the seminary’s achievements, most notably its direct role in founding the Islamic Republic of Iran and cementing the doctrine of religious rule that today drives both domestic policy and regional confrontation.
Qom’s centennial event was less a religious observance than a demonstration of political power. The seminary’s alumni—among them both Supreme Leaders, the late President Ebrahim Raisi, and key intelligence officials—dominate Iran’s clerical, military, and intelligence hierarchies. This institutional overlap has produced a regime tightly controlled by doctrinaire Shi’a clerics, with Qom as the intellectual and ideological engine behind Iran’s Islamic Revolution.
The Qom Seminary and the Theocratic Power Structure
Founded in the early twentieth century, Qom’s seminary quickly rose to prominence, transforming from a center of religious learning into the power hub of Iran’s Shi’a theocracy. The shift accelerated after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, as Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini—a Qom cleric—installed the concept of ‘Velayat-e Faqih’ (rule by the supreme jurist) as the ideological backbone of the new state.
Qom graduates wield disproportionate power at every level of Iranian governance. Key figures include:
– Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, revolutionary founder and first Supreme Leader
– Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the current Supreme Leader
– Ebrahim Raisi, the late President (killed in a helicopter crash in May 2023)
– Esmail Khatib, Iran’s current Minister of Intelligence and former chief of the Iranian prison system
This direct pipeline from religious academia to the regime’s upper echelons has ensured that every major branch of state authority—including the judiciary, security apparatus, and media—remains loyal to the revolutionary vision forged in Qom.
Ideology and Policy: From Doctrine to Proxy Warfare
The regime frames the survival and expansion of the Islamic Republic as a divine imperative, citing Qom’s theological leadership as the source of its legitimacy. This outlook extends into every facet of policy, from the suppression of dissent at home to the sponsorship of terror and proxy militias abroad—what the regime refers to as the ‘Axis of Resistance.’
Qom’s curriculum does not merely teach theology: it indoctrinates successive generations of clerics and officials in anti-Western, antisemitic ideology, justifying both the regime’s repression of its own citizens and its campaign to eradicate Israel. The seminary is the intellectual incubator for the export of radical Shi’a Islam, providing clerical support for Iran-backed movements in Lebanon (Hezbollah), Iraq, Syria, and Yemen. In Gaza, the doctrines originating in Qom have shaped terror organizations such as Hamas, bolstering their campaign against Israel with material, logistical, and ideological support.
The atrocities committed on October 7, 2023 by Hamas in southern Israel—including mass murder and hostage-taking—were openly celebrated by the Iranian regime and rationalized through religious edicts endorsed by clerics trained in Qom. The seminary’s alumni continue to justify these acts as part of a broader war imposed by Iran and its terror proxies on Israel.
Suppressing Reform, Enforcing Orthodoxy
Domestically, Qom’s dominance has come at a profound cost to Iranian society. Backed by the regime, the seminary’s clerics have wielded their moral authority against reformers, women’s rights activists, and pluralist voices. Waves of dissidents have been imprisoned, tortured, or executed under laws and policies promulgated by regime jurists, with Qom at the core of the ideological defenses for such repression.
Crackdowns on protests—in particular those sparked by opposition to compulsory hijab and systemic economic hardship—have intensified over recent years, with the religious establishment issuing repeated justifications for lethal force and the silencing of opposition. The death of Jina Mahsa Amini in 2022 triggered nationwide demonstrations, yet the regime’s violent response was framed as a defense of ‘Islamic values’ as interpreted by Qom’s clerical elite.
From Iranian Heartland to Regional Threat
The Qom seminary’s influence extends far beyond Iran’s borders. Through its alumni, Qom shapes the leadership and worldview of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)—the primary instrument of Iranian military policy, responsible for orchestrating attacks against Israel, Western targets, and moderate Arab states. Graduates of Qom serve in the IRGC’s intelligence and operational wings, where their training justifies ideological warfare, the use of terrorism, and destabilizing the region’s fragile states.
The seminary’s ideological export strategy has helped sustain a generation of militants and terror commanders across the region. In Lebanon, Qom’s teachings underpin Hezbollah’s aggression against Israel and its campaign to undermine Lebanon’s government. Yemen’s Houthi insurgency, now a fully Iranian-backed force, incorporates Qom-inspired clerics into its leadership cadre, fueling that war’s intractability and humanitarian toll.
A Persistent Engine of Radicalization
At 100 years old, the Qom seminary stands as both the intellectual fountainhead and practical command center for Iran’s revolutionary apparatus—a regime that openly seeks not coexistence, but victory over Israel and the West. The seminary’s centennial was less a historical milestone than a reaffirmation of this mission.
In the words of regime officials and through the actions of its alumni, Qom continues to produce the ideologues, enforcers, and strategists for a program of violence and subversion that has brought suffering both inside Iran and across the Middle East. As Israel and its democratic allies face ongoing threats from Iranian-backed terror networks, the enduring centrality of Qom remains one of the defining realities of the region’s instability.
This systematic entwinement of the seminary with the regime’s doctrine and leadership guarantees that as long as Qom occupies its privileged place, Iran will remain on a collision course with regional peace and international norms.
