A wave of social media posts amplified within “sovereignist”, pro-Russian and far-left “bubbles” portray Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as an example of morality, a feminist (!!!) and a patriot who chose, with dignity, to become a martyr for his people. In fact, Khamenei was one of the bloodiest dictators of recent decades, and his policies turned Iran into an international pariah and caused a deep economic crisis.
NEWS: “What does Khamenei’s martyrdom mean? First of all, for the average Iranian, it is akin to the death of Soleimani, further proof of the perversity of his enemies. However, whereas Soleimani was a fighter, directly involved in military operations (which could justify his killing), Khamenei’s killing is seen as a barbaric act of treacherous murder of a man who is holy to Iranians. And here comes the twist.
The death of the Iranian leader is meant to further radicalize the people. People feel treacherously attacked, seeing the entire operation as an attack on their faith. Basically, Khamenei sacrificed himself in order to prolong the Islamic Revolution. Thus, every Iranian feels that at this moment, his and his country’s greatest objective is winning the war. While the USA and Israel expect Khamenei’s death to weaken the regime, they will basically secure the opposite. Here, we can notice the superficiality of Western thinking”. (Facebook Camelia Gabriela Suciu, who describes herself as spokesperson of the Romanian Communist Party)
“Ali Khamenei was a billion times more feminist and moral than that Satan of a ‘Most Blessed Father’ btw. I said what I said.” (Instagram Oana Lasconi)
NARRATIVES: 1. Iran’s supreme totalitarian leader was a moral man. 2. Ali Khamenei was also very feminist.
PURPOSE: To amplify the anti-Semitic and anti-Western narrative by turning into a martyr a criminal dictator who led a totalitarian regime for almost half a century. To amplify radical Islamist propaganda and to justify Khamenei’s dictatorship.
Khamenei the ‘patriot’ pushed his country into economic crisis and turned it into an international pariah
WHY THE NARRATIVES ARE FALSE: First and foremost, no dictatorship is led by a moral authority, simply because a dictatorship suppresses rights, free justice and democracy in general. Furthermore, a moral leader would never initiate and consolidate a repression apparatus as severe as the one operated in Tehran, which has killed thousands of people (estimates range from 7,000 officially to over 30,000, according to an opposition publication citing inside sources) just during the most recent protests in the country, when security forces fired live ammunition at the crowds.
A moral authority would protect the lives and rights of citizens; it would not accuse opponents of being “foreign agents”, would not hang them and would not repress protests.
International human rights organizations have repeatedly accused Khamenei’s regime of mass executions, arrests and systematic torture in order to stifle any political or social opposition. After China, Iran is the country with the highest number of death sentences and executions in the world, and the use of capital punishment is seen by Khamenei’s opponents and by Western democracies as a moral destruction of justice.
The policies employed by Khamenei’s regime led Iran into a severe and prolonged economic crisis and, ultimately, into the war currently unfolding, despite the fact that any leader’s objectives should be the prosperity and security of his own people. Thus, the nuclear program attracted international sanctions because, despite Tehran’s assurances that its goals were civilian, there were signs that it was pursuing the acquisition of a nuclear weapon. After initially accepting the Agreement with the major powers, which limited its uranium production and granted international inspectors access to nuclear sites, the regime in Tehran invoked the American withdrawal from the Agreement in order to start enriching uranium far beyond the level necessary for civilian applications and to block experts’ access to a number of facilities.
In terms of foreign policy, Iran earned its status as an international pariah by financing and arming groups and militias (Da’wa, Kataib Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the Houthis, etc.) involved in organizing terrorist attacks and/or operations to destabilize states in the region by challenging their central administrations and creating independent poles of power, armed insurgencies, etc. With Khomeini in power, Tehran invested in financing external operations and these groups and militias funds that were desperately needed in the economy. Moreover, this was denounced by the population, so that for almost two decades of protests in Iran people have regularly chanted “No Gaza, no Lebanon, my life for Iran”. Many of these protests (including the most recent ones) were triggered by the serious economic situation, even if in some cases political demands were also raised.
In feminist Iran, police beat women to death, while public display of hair by women is considered a crime
As for Ali Khamenei’s “feminism”, the claim is stunningly ridiculous. Even people who have not the faintest idea about the nature of the Iranian regime and imagine it might be some kind of democratic paradise must have heard of the case of Mahsa Amini, a young woman who was beaten to death in 2022 by the so-called “morality police”, after being detained for not wearing the Islamic veil in accordance with the dress code imposed by the country’s laws. Mahsa Amini’s death led to a wave of protests in Iran, and social media were flooded with footage of Iranian women removing their veils or cutting their hair as a sign of protest. Therefore, in the country of “feminist” Khamenei, a gesture such as cutting one’s hair short or giving up the veil, a gesture deemed trivial in the very Western countries hosting the authors of such false narratives, represents an act of defiance and a crime.
Mahsa’s killing was possible in a regime that imposed strict rules on women, such as dress codes monitored by the “morality police,” who can arrest and assault women. All these things were not merely tolerated, but imposed by the “feminist” leader Khamenei.
From a feminist perspective, such a leader should have ensured that things were exactly the opposite of how they unfolded in the reality of Ali Khamenei’s regime.
BACKGROUND: The narratives are being circulated at a moment of maximum tension, fear and agitation in Europe, caused above all by the unknown and the unpredictable and by the fluid evolution of the conflict in the Middle East, triggered by the American-Israeli attack on Iran on February 28.
Another extremely relevant aspect for the context in which narratives about the martyrdom of the ayatollah are being circulated is that, after almost a week of conflict, Iran is alone in the war, it is not supported by the Muslim states in the region nor by allies such as Russia, China or other dictatorships.
No state, by the time this article was published, has intervened in support of Iran, the largest financier of terrorism and of Hezbollah propaganda in Europe. Khamenei’s martyrization aims to sugarcoat the actions of Hezbollah terrorists and of the criminal regime in Tehran, just as the justification of Hamas’s “defensive” actions are designed to blur the brutality of the terrorist attacks and war crimes committed by this organization.
