How to Use ayatollah in a Sentence

ayatollah

noun
Definition of ayatollahnext
  • But the chasm between the U.S. and Iran precedes the rule of the ayatollahs.
    — Robin Wright, The New Yorker, 6 Feb. 2024
  • Inside, and some steps to the right, the pontiff will come face to face with the ayatollah.
    — Star Tribune, 3 Mar. 2021
  • And under the deal, the ayatollahs have no viable path to a bomb for well over a decade.
    — Trudy Rubin, Philly.com, 13 Oct. 2017
  • And the ayatollah is already all-in with Russia and China in this fight.
    — ABC News, 27 Nov. 2022
  • That, the ayatollah said, was Trump’s reason for suggesting such talks in the first place.
    — Farnaz Fassihi, BostonGlobe.com, 1 Aug. 2020
  • The pope walked down an alley barely wide enough for his entourage near the ayatollah’s home.
    — New York Times, 6 Mar. 2021
  • This was much like the fatwa issued by Iran’s ayatollah on Salman Rushdie.
    — Jordan Castro, Harper's Magazine, 9 Jan. 2024
  • Not for the first time, demonstrators have taken to the streets to challenge the theocratic regime in Tehran, and the ayatollah’s death squads are getting to work.
    — The Editors, National Review, 26 Sep. 2022
  • The aging ayatollah, who underwent surgery for a fractured thigh bone last year, looked tired.
    — Time, 6 Mar. 2021
  • There is speculation that Raisi, who is a cleric but not an ayatollah, may be on the road to getting fast-tracked for the top job once the supreme leader passes on.
    — Amy Kellogg, Fox News, 26 May 2021
  • The aging ayatollah, who underwent surgery for a fractured thigh last year, looked tired.
    — Nicole Winfield and Qassim Abdul-Zahra, chicagotribune.com, 6 Mar. 2021
  • And there is no reason to think that any amount of U.S. intervention, short of outright invasion, could hasten the fall of the ayatollahs.
    — Max Boot, Foreign Affairs, 10 Mar. 2023
  • The ayatollahs have neither the desire nor the incentive to renegotiate even a comma of the agreement.
    — John Bolton, WSJ, 28 Sep. 2017
  • Helping the Baghdad government is equivalent, sad to say, to helping the ayatollahs in Iran.
    — WSJ, 26 June 2017
  • The feature, then, would not have been used in the Khamenei incident earlier this year; the account, @khamenei_ir, while long believed to belong to the ayatollah or his office, is not verified.
    — Paris Martineau, WIRED, 27 June 2019
  • Most unnerving, the president’s strategic blindness threatens to put the Iranian ayatollahs back on a short-term path to a bomb.
    — Trudy Rubin, Philly.com, 27 Sep. 2017
  • The imprisonment of not just his sons but his daughter as well was considered a grave insult to him as a leading Shiite ayatollah.
    — Arash Azizi, New York Times, 1 Nov. 2019
  • Last week, Hadi Matar nearly ended Mr. Rushdie’s life, seemingly in answer to the ayatollah’s call.
    — Reza Pahlavi, WSJ, 18 Aug. 2022
  • The Athens airport was used to mimic the one in Tehran and, in one scene, a huge building-sized mural depicts an ayatollah, an addition thanks to computer special effects.
    — Mark Kennedy, Star Tribune, 25 Sep. 2020
  • The fatwa that had been placed on Larry’s head for mocking the ayatollah was canceled but, in the final scene of the season, an Iranian unaware of this development chased Larry down the street.
    — Dan Snierson, EW.com, 2 Dec. 2019
  • Taeb has been moved to an advisory role to the commander in chief of the Revolutionary Guard and not to Khamenei, which would have been more typical for one of the ayatollah’s close confidants.
    — Ronen Bergman, BostonGlobe.com, 29 June 2022
  • The ayatollah knows that Shiites are a minority in most other Muslim nations across the region.
    — The Editorial Board, WSJ, 5 Mar. 2021
  • Nasser Makarem Shirazi, a grand ayatollah, is also worth many millions of dollars.
    — Michael R. Pompeo, Foreign Affairs, 15 Oct. 2018
  • If Generalísimo Franco had been an ayatollah, there would have been a fatwa.
    — John McPhee, The New Yorker, 12 Apr. 2021
  • The decree felt like something civilized people had left behind in the Middle Ages, but the ayatollah’s words tore around the modern world, inspiring riots, bombings and killings.
    — Ron Charles, Washington Post, 15 Aug. 2022
  • In this culture of the physical imbued with the sacred, Najaf and Karbala, with their grand ayatollahs and seminaries, along with the mosque in Kufa, where Ali died, form the points of a sacred triangle.
    — Aatish Taseer, New York Times, 9 Nov. 2023
  • Iran's ayatollahs have blamed America for their country's ills since taking power 40 years ago.
    — Nic Robertson, CNN, 8 Apr. 2020
  • The ayatollah's wife is buried in the complex as well, along with several notable political figures.
    — Amanda Erickson, Washington Post, 7 June 2017
  • In Iraq's holiest city, a pontiff will meet a revered ayatollah and make history with a message of coexistence in a place plagued by bitter divisions.
    — Star Tribune, 3 Mar. 2021
  • Secularism is making inroads even in the holy city of Najaf, the seat of Iraq’s ayatollahs, which has thrived on Shia pilgrimage since the American invasion.
    — The Economist, 28 Mar. 2018

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'ayatollah.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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