Posted by Alumni from The Atlantic
March 2, 2026
Celebrating or calling for the deaths of others is wrong, and bad for the soul. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who was killed yesterday by Israel, did so just about every time he spoke in public for 37 years. He handed out Death to Americas and Death to Israels the way other people would say Yo! or How you doin'' The one time I saw him in person, at Friday prayer at Tehran University in 2004, he ended his sermon with these chants and then drove off literally seconds later in the back of an armored sedan, passing so close to me that I could see his car had recently been waxed. Many, many Iranians, as well as Syrians, Iraqis, Lebanese, and Ukrainians, wish Khamenei could be brought back to life for just one minute, so they could give him the finger, or maybe the whole fist. I missed my chance. He was the enemy of many. But he was also an enemy to himself, one of the Iranian regime's points of vulnerability. During the past two years of conflict with Israel and the United States, Iran... learn more