30 Years after his Death, Ayatollah Khomeini Still Costs Iranians Millions of Dollars a Year

It was 30 years ago that Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic, passed away. Yet the semi-governmental organization that bears his name is still spending vast sums of money every year.

There are no official or reliable reports documenting the finances of the so-called “House of Imam Khomeini”. We do not know the number of salaried employees or the cost of maintaining Khomeini’s shrine, a site of pilgrimage in Tehran.

We also lack information about the income and expenditure of the Institute for Compilation and Publication of Imam Khomeini's Works.

However, we do know the annual share of the government budget allocated to the House.

In the Iranian calendar year 1398 (March 21, 2019 – March 20, 2020), the House of Imam Khomeini and its subsidiaries has been allocated approximately 60 billion tomans (US$14 million).

Of this amount, 26.2 billion tomans (US$6.2 million) has been earmarked for the Institute for Compilation and Publication of Imam Khomeini's Works.

Khomeini’s shrine will receive 24.5 billion tomans (US$5.7 million) and the Imam Khomeini Research Institute 8.51 billion tomans (US$2 million).

In the budget for the previous year, the share for the House was 71.342 billion tomans (US$17 million). The figures for the years 1396 and 1395 were 76.989 billion tomans (US$18 million) and 59.537 billion tomans (US$14 million), respectively.

Over these four years, the House has, therefore, cost the country approximately 208 billion tomans (over US$49 million) in total.

But what is this budget used for? By examining the first and fourth appendices of the 1398 budget, we can find out the following information.

The Budget for the Institute for Compilation and Publication of Imam Khomeini's Works

The Institute for Compilation and Publication of Imam Khomeini's Works has a total budget of 26.2 billion tomans (US$6.2 million).

Of this, 6.2 billion tomans (US$1.4 million) has been earmarked for development and 20 billion tomans (US$4.8 million) for current expenses.

Of the development budget, 430 million tomans (US$102,000) has been allocated to “organizing and maintaining the House of Imam’s cultural collection in Qom”. The rest is for “maintaining equipment and machinery”.

The budget for current expenses is broken down into nine categories, as follows:

1. Donating books to Iranian and foreign scholars, public libraries, and scientific, cultural, and artistic centers: 823 million tomans (US$195,000).
2. Organizing and supporting scientific, cultural, and artistic conferences on the Imam’s thoughts and ideas: 2.57 billion tomans (US$608,000).
3. Publishing scientific, promotional, and cultural weekly, monthly, and quarterly journals and periodicals related to the Imam’s thoughts and ideas: 1.877 billion tomans (US$443,000).
4. Supporting cultural and artistic activities connected to Imam Khomeini’s thoughts and ideas: 549 million tomans (US$130,000).
5. Printing the Imam Khomeini Encyclopedia: 1.691 billion tomans (US$400,000).
6. Supporting Imam Khomeini’s websites in Persian, Arabic, English, and French: 3.824 billion tomans (US$904,000).
7. Holding ceremonies at Imam Khomeini’s shrine on the anniversary of his death: 3.76 billion tomans (US$889,000).
8. Identifying and purchasing written, visual, and audio works to complete and expand the Museum of Imam Khomeini: 4.419 billion tomans (US$1.04 million).
9. Maintaining and protecting places associated with Imam Khomeini: 1 billion tomans (US$236 thousand).

The Budget for Khomeini’s Shrine

From the budget of 24.5 billion tomans (US$5.8 million) for Khomeini’s shrine, 10.5 billion tomans (US$2.5 million) has been allotted to development and 14 billion (US$3.3 million) to current expenses.

“Development” is defined as “completing the cultural collection at the Imam’s holy shrine”. This project was started in 1988, immediately after Khomeini’s death, and is due to be completed in 2021. As of March 20, 2018, this project had received more than 225 billion tomans (US$53 million).

The budget for current expenses is divided into three parts:

1. Managing the shrine’s affairs and offering services to pilgrims: 6.5 billion tomans (US$1.5 million).
2. Holding a memorial service on the anniversary of Khomeini’s death: 7 billion tomans (US$1.65 million).
3. Holding ceremonies on national and religious holidays and occasions: 500 million tomans (US$120,000).

Holding ceremonies to mark Khomeini’s death (numbers 7 and 3 in the lists above) has therefore cost the Iranian people a total of 10.760 billion tomans (US$2.55 million).

The Budget for the Imam Khomeini Education and Research Institute

The total budget for the Imam Khomeini Education and Research Institute is 8.51 billion tomans (US$2 million).

Of this, 110 million tomans (US$26,000) has been assigned to “acquiring and maintaining equipment and machinery” and 8.4 billion tomans (US$2 million) to current expenses.

Current expenses are divided into four categories:

1. “Applied research”: 3.6 billion tomans (US$85,000).
2. Training PhD-level researchers: 1.191 billion tomans (US$282,000).
3. Training graduate-level researchers: 2.309 billion tomans (US$546,000).
4. Identifying premier scholarly works in the field of Imam Khomeini studies: 1.3 billion tomans (US$307,000).

According to the official website of the Imam Khomeini Education and Research Institute, the organization was created in 1996 “to conduct research into various aspects of the Imam’s life and thoughts, to present his views on the Islamic Revolution of Iran to domestic and foreign scientific societies, and to train scholars in this field.”

According to Iran’s Institute for Research and Planning in Higher Education, the Imam Khomeini Education and Research Institute had a total of 175 students in the academic year 2016 – 2017: 125 at graduate level and 50 at PhD level.

By way of comparison, the budget for the Imam Khomeini Education and Research Institute is around 500 million tomans (US$118,000) more than the budget for the Economic Affairs Research Institute and almost 3.5 times greater the budget for the Environmental Disasters Research Center.