You might find this origin story interesting.
One of Khomeini's early works.

Ahmad Kasravi was the founder of a political-social movement whose goal was to build an Iranian secular identity. He was very critical of the superstitious religious practices and wrote books criticising shi'ism, Sufism, Bahaism.

This young Mullah 'Navab Safavi' gets his feelings hurt and tries to terror him but he fails.

Khomeini hears this and issues a fatwa.
Kasravi then catches a case from Mossadegh's government for his books. He shows up to court with his assistant. These two Islamists the Imami brothers catch them in a room. Long story short his assistant is found stabbed and Kasravi ends up with a bullet in his stomach and 27 stab wounds.

The Imami brothers get away with murder.
They claim the assistant pulled a gun first and that they stabbed his hand in self defence a shot got fired and that bullet killed Kasravi.

Khamenei basically reinstated the fatwa in 2019 with a tweet too

And his twitter account to this day is still up and running.

Amazing isn’t it

The west must really need him