It was only when Khomeini's core supporters had consolidated their hold on power that wilayat al-faqih was made known to the general public and written into the country's new Islamic constitution.

[19] Without a leader to serve the people as "a vigilant trustee", enforcing law and order, Islam would fall victim "to obsolescence and decay", its "rites and institutions", "customs and ordinances" disappearing or mutating as "heretical innovators", "atheists and unbelievers" subtracted and added doctrines and practices.

While waiting for the reappearance of that Twelfth Imam, Shia jurists have tended to stick to one of three approaches to the state: cooperating with it, trying to influence policies by becoming active in politics, or most commonly, remaining aloof from it.

'[34]While this might sound like ʿAli is simply remonstrating against the judge who had exceeded his authority and sinned, Khomeini reasons that hadith's use of the term judge must refer to a trained jurist (fuqaha), as the "function of a judge belongs to just fuqaha [plural for faqih]" ',[36] and since trained jurists are neither sinful wretches nor prophets, "we deduce from the tradition quoted above that the fuqaha are the legatees";[37] and since legatees of Muhammad, such as Imams, have the same power to command and rule Muslims as Muhammad did, it is therefore demonstrated that the saying, `The seat you are occupying is filled by someone who is a prophet, the legatee of a prophet, or else a sinful wretch,` proves that Islamic jurists are the rightful rulers of Muslims and others.

Everyone, including the Most Noble Messenger [Muhammad] and his successors, is subject to law and will remain so for all eternity ... "[27] The governance of the faqih is equivalent to "the appointment of a guardian for a minor."

[52] [53] Khomeini says that Islamic government will follow 'Ali, whose seat of command was simply the corner of a mosque,[54] threatened to have his daughter's hand cut off if she did not pay back a loan from the treasury,[55] and who "lived more frugally than the most impoverished of our students".

[56] The government will follow in the foot steps of "victorious and triumphant" armies of early Muslims who set "out from the mosque to go into battle" and feared "only God".

[21] The "historical roots" of the opposition are Western unbelievers who want "to keep us backward, to keep us in our present miserable state so they can exploit our riches, our underground wealth, our lands and our human resources.

[65] We must protest and make the people aware that the Jews and their foreign backers are opposed to the very foundations of Islam and wish to establish Jewish domination throughout the world.

Khomeini is said to have cited nineteenth-century Shi'i jurist Mulla Ahmad Naraqi (d. 1829) and Shaikh Muhammad Hussain Naini (d. 1936) as authorities who held a similar view to himself on the political role of the ulama.

[31][69] An older influence is Abu Nasr Al-Farabi, and his book, The Principles of the People of the Virtuous City, (al-madina[t] al-fadila,[note 6] which has been called "a Muslim version of Plato's Republic").

[70] Another influence is said to be Mohammad Baqir al-Sadr, a cleric and author of books on developing Islamic alternatives to capitalism and socialism, whom Khomeini met in Najaf.

[71][note 7] Other observers credit the "Islamic Left," specifically Ali Shariati, as the origin of important concepts of Khomeini's Waliyat al-faqih, particularly the abolition of monarchy and the idea that an "economic order" has divided the people "into two groups: oppressors and oppressed.

"[26][72][73] The Confederation of Iranian Students in Exile and the famous pamphlet Gharbzadegi by the ex-Tudeh writer Jalal Al-e-Ahmad are also thought to have influenced Khomeini.

[74] This is in spite of the fact that Khomeini loathed Marxism in general,[75] and Shariati harshly criticized the traditional Shia clergy for (allegedly) standing in the way of the revolutionary potential of the Shi'a masses.

[76] Khomeini reference to governments based on constitutions, divided into three branches, and containing planning agencies, also belie a strict adherence to precedents set by the rule of the Prophet Muhammad and Imam Ali, 1400 years ago.

[77][78] Scholar Vali Nasr believes the ideal of an Islamic government ruled by the ulama "relied heavily" on Greek philosopher Plato's book The Republic, and its vision of "a specially educated `guardian` class led by a `philosopher-king`".

[86][87]Khomeini cited two earlier clerical authorities — Mulla Ahmad Naraqi and Shaikh Muhammad Hussain Naini (mentioned above) — as holding similar views to himself on the importance of the ulama holding political power, but neither made "it the central theme of their political theory as Khomeini does," although they may have hinted "at this in their writings",[31] according to Baháʼí scholar of Shia Islam, Moojan Momen.

Momen also argues that the hadith Khomeini quotes in support of his concept of velayat-e faqih, either have "a potential ambiguity which makes the meaning controversial," or are considered `weak` (da'if) by virtue of their chain of transmitters.

[88] In a religion where innovation (bid'ah) is a menace to be constantly on guard for, Iranian historian Ervand Abrahamian writes that Khomeini's ideas "broke sharply" from Shi'i traditions.

[32][33] But until the appearance of Khomeini's book, "no Shi'i writer ever explicitly contended that monarchies per se were illegitimate or that the senior clergy had the authority to control the state.

[92] Scholar of Islam Vali Nasr describes Khomeini's concept as reducing Shi'ism "to a strange (and as it would turn out violent) parody of Plato".

"[107] When a campaign started to install velayat-e faqih in the new Iranian constitution, critics complained that Khomeini had made no mention of velayat-e faqih "in the proclamations he issued during the revolution",[108] that he had become the leader of the revolution promising to advise, rather than rule, the country after the Shah was overthrown, as late as 1978 while in Paris "he explicitly stated that rather than seeking or accepting any official government position, he would confine himself to the supervisory role of a guide in order to pursue the society's best interest",[109] when in fact he had developed his theory of rule by jurists rather than by democratic elections, and spread it among his followers years before the revolution started;[110] a complaint that some continue to make.

[115]As of early October 2022, "women and men, Persians and minorities, students and workers" in Iran are said to be "united ... against the mullahs' rule",[116] to ”have made up their minds, ... they don't want reform, they want regime change".