Is It Proper to Rejoice Over Khamenei’s Death?

"With his spectacles, Palestinian kaffiyeh, long robes, and silver beard, Ayatollah Khamenei cast himself as a religious scholar as well as a writer and translator of works on Islam. He affected an avuncular and magnanimous aloofness, running the country from a perch above the jousting of daily politics."

That lyrical passage is from The New York Times's obituary of Iran's supreme leader, who was killed Saturday when US and Israeli forces reduced his Tehran compound to rubble. The Washington Post likewise made a point of softening and humanizing the dead dictator, recalling his "bushy white beard and easy smile" and noting that he was "fond of Persian poetry and classic Western novels." Khamenei's literary life was also played up by The Guardian, which noted that the ayatollah had been an "avid" reader who adored "Les Misérables," which he "described as 'miraculous' and a 'book of wisdom.'"

To judge from such passages, as Maya Sulkin observed in The Free Press, one might imagine that Khameini's truest essence was that of a bookish scholar, rather than a theocratic tyrant who spent nearly four decades imprisoning, torturing, and executing innocent victims.

But the Iranians who had actually lived under Khamenei's rule were not reading obituaries. They were rejoicing.

In Tehran, residents leaned from windows and gathered on rooftops, shouting with joy and excitement. Video from across Iran showed people dancing in the streets at news that the ayatollah was dead. In Los Angeles, London, and Toronto, members of the Iranian diaspora poured out to celebrate. Representative Yassamin Ansari, an Arizona Democrat and the first Iranian American elected to Congress, spoke for millions when she said simply: "Khamenei was the epitome of evil. No one should mourn him."

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Middle East Matters (MEM) (@middleeastmatters)

Why were Iranians rejoicing? Because for nearly four decades, Khamenei made their lives a waking nightmare. He imprisoned women for showing their hair, hanged gay men in public squares, executed dissidents by the thousands, and ran Evin Prison — where rape and psychological torture were standard practice — as an instrument of state terror.

When 22-year-old Mahsa Amini died in custody in 2022 after being arrested for wearing her hijab improperly, and millions took to the streets in protest, he responded by killing more than 500 of them and imprisoning 22,000 more. When a fresh uprising erupted this past January, he massacred tens of thousands.

Why were Iranians rejoicing? Because for nearly four decades, Khamenei made their lives a waking nightmare.

That was what he did at home. Beyond Iran's borders, Khamenei sponsored the terror network — Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis — that has kept the Middle East drenched in blood for decades. He facilitated President Bashar al-Assad's slaughter of some 500,000 Syrians, most of them Sunni Muslims. He directed the killing of hundreds of Americans, from the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia to the roadside bombs that tore through US troops in Iraq.

For 37 years he bankrolled and armed the jihadist proxies whose explicit mission was the annihilation of Israel — a campaign that sent many thousands of innocent men, women, and children to early graves. And all the while he proclaimed "Death to America, Death to Israel" — not as hyperbole, but as official state doctrine.

Yet there are those for whom none of that is sufficient reason to welcome Khamenei's demise. Hasan Piker, a left-wing streamer with millions of online followers, scolded Iranians for cheering the US-Israeli strikes that killed the ayatollah, asking how "civilian deaths can ever be justified as progress." Rajdeep Sardesai, one of India's best-known journalists, pronounced such celebrations "fraught — morally, diplomatically and strategically" and expressed dismay that anyone could applaud a political leader's death. And Pastor Pete Pawelek, an evangelical minister, grounded his objection in religion. As a Christian, he wrote, "I do not celebrate the death of a man, even one associated with grave evil." It is never right, they and others insist, to rejoice at anyone's death.

They're wrong. Such objectors always are.

When Saddam Hussein was hanged in 2006, European governments deplored his death as "barbaric." When Seal Team Six killed Osama bin Laden in 2011, some American commentators were appalled by the spontaneous jubilation that ensued. Each time a monstrous tyrant is brought to justice, the same chorus arises, citing whatever principle is nearest to hand — Christian humility, diplomatic decorum, progressive solidarity.

"This is something we've been asking for, begging for, crying for, for 47 years, and finally it's done."

But the elimination of evil and homicidal despots makes the world a better place. When a man who spent decades inflicting horror on innocents meets his end, good people rejoice.

Western obituary writers may have been taken with the late ayatollah's "avuncular and magnanimous aloofness," but the liberated Iranians dancing in the streets knew him rather better than that. One expatriate spoke for millions: "This is something we've been asking for, begging for, crying for, for 47 years, and finally it's done." That outpouring of joy is the most honest obituary Khamenei will ever receive.

Read this related article for Jewish sources on the subject: Should Jews Celebrate the Fall of Evil?  

This op-ed originally appeared in The Boston Globe