Artist: Ahmad Barakizadeh
By Kayhan Life Staff
The Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic, was killed last week in Israeli and U.S. strikes on Iran. For nearly four decades, Ali Khamenei presided over velayat-e faqih motlagh — the absolute rule of the Islamic jurist — while claiming to defend justice, dignity, and independence. In practice, however, his rule was defined by misplaced priorities and endemic incompetence.
Obsessed with confrontation with Israel, he repeatedly predicted that the Jewish state would not survive another 25 years. The system he built squandered Iran’s wealth and sacrificed its human potential on the altar of its ideology.
Artist: Behnam Mohammadi
By Kayhan Life Staff
The closing days of Khamenei’s rule will define his legacy, sealing the coffin of a regime now collapsing under the weight of its own brutality. Tens of thousands of civilians were shot in alleys, streets, homes, and even in hospitals — a crime against humanity and one of the worst massacres in Iranian history. In those last days, the regime’s fanatical attachment to absolute power was fully exposed: its readiness to leave scorched earth behind in Iran, and provoke a wider regional conflict with global implications, than surrender control.
But Khamenei’s death will not, on its own, bring the clerical rule to an end. The Islamic Republic is not simply a man but a system — a web of ideological security forces, patronage and mafia-like networks, and theocratic institutions — that persists even as it crumbles under the weight of its own failures. It is bereft of legitimacy at home and discredited abroad.
Yet, Iran is breathing, beyond the wreckage Khamenei left behind, It lives in the hopes and determination of its people. This Iran wants peace at home, positive relations abroad, and to be a source of stability. Its vision is based on four main ideas: Iran as one nation with its borders respected, separation of state and religion, respect for human rights and dignity, and free and fair elections.
Iran is rising from the ashes of Khamenei and the ruins of the Islamic Republic.
