No Tears for a Tyrant: Why Khamenei Faced the Music at Last

 

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei ruled with bullets, buried thousands, and called it order. Now he’s dead. No tears. Just consequences. Tyrants who drown nations in blood eventually choke on it.

I don’t mourn dictators. I don’t light candles for men who light fires under their own people. When I heard that Ali Khamenei was dead on February 28, at age 86, I didn’t blink. I didn’t sigh. I didn’t whisper a prayer. I said what many people were already thinking: it’s about time he faced the music.

Let’s call this what it is. Ali Khamenei ruled Iran for 35 years. That’s longer than many monarchs. He wasn’t elected in any real sense of the word. He inherited power in 1989 after Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini died, and he tightened his grip year after year. Presidents came and went. Parliaments argued. But the real power sat in one room, under one turban, behind one cold stare.

And when the people rose up, he crushed them.

Late last year, protests erupted in Tehran over the collapsing rial. Iran’s currency has been battered for years by sanctions, corruption, and economic mismanagement. By early January, protests had spread to all 31 provinces. That’s not a small riot. That’s a nation screaming. What did Khamenei say? He warned that “rioters must be put in their place.” That’s dictator language. That’s code for blood.

When his warning didn’t scare people back into silence, he gave the order to crush the uprising by any means necessary. In the weeks that followed, security forces killed at least 7,000 people. Activists say the real number may be more than 36,500. Even if we take the lower number, 7,000 is not crowd control. It’s a massacre. It’s a slaughterhouse.

And this wasn’t the first time.

In 2019, protests over fuel price hikes swept Iran. Amnesty International reported that security forces killed at least 304 people in just a few days. Other human rights groups put the figure much higher. In 2022, after the death of Mahsa Amini in morality-police custody, protests exploded again. Hundreds were killed. Thousands were arrested. Teenagers were shot in the streets. Women were beaten for showing their hair. Judges handed down death sentences like parking tickets.

This is the regime some people want me to cry over? There’s no way I will grieve for that garbage!

Khamenei didn’t just oversee repression. He built the machine that made it possible. He controlled the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a force that is not just military but economic and political. He controlled the Basij, a paramilitary group with about 1,000,000 members, tasked with enforcing ideological discipline. That’s not a neighborhood watch. That’s a million-strong intimidation squad. He also controlled the Guardian Council, a 12-member body that vets candidates for elections. If you don’t pass their filter, you don’t run. That’s how you rig a system without calling it rigged. Even when a moderate like Mohammad Khatami won the presidency in 1997, Khamenei clipped his wings. Real power stayed put.

Some will say he was a complex man. He studied in Qom. He liked Victor Hugo’s “Les Misérables.” He translated Sayyid Qutb into Farsi. Fine. A tyrant who reads novels is still a tyrant. A wolf in a library is still a wolf.

He survived an assassination attempt in 1981 that left his right arm paralyzed. Some will frame that as tragedy. I see irony. A man who survived violence went on to preside over decades of it.

Under his watch, Iran’s economy sank. The rial collapsed. Youth unemployment soared. Sanctions tightened, partly because of the regime’s nuclear ambitions and regional aggression. Instead of opening up, Khamenei doubled down. He poured resources into proxy groups across the Middle East. Hezbollah in Lebanon. Militias in Iraq. Support for Bashar al-Assad in Syria, where more than 500,000 people have died since 2011, according to UN estimates. Iranian fingerprints are all over that battlefield.

So when President Donald Trump declared Khamenei dead after the February 28 bombing campaign began, and when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stood firm beside him, I didn’t flinch. I know some people will call it escalation. I call it consequence.

Trump denounced Khamenei as uniquely evil. That word makes people uncomfortable. But tell me what word fits a man who orders the killing of thousands of his own citizens for protesting a currency collapse. Tell me what word fits a leader who keeps his country isolated for more than 30 years, squeezes dissent, and fattens foundations that control billions in assets while ordinary Iranians struggle to buy bread.

Khamenei controlled bonyads, so-called charitable foundations that expanded into construction, mining, and other sectors. They paid no tax. They faced little competition because sanctions blocked foreign companies. That’s not charity. That’s a shadow economy. It enriched the regime while the rial burned. And let’s not pretend he was some ceremonial figure. He played institutions against each other like chess pieces. The army against the Revolutionary Guard. The president against the Majlis. He made sure all roads led back to him. Supreme leaders serve for life. That’s a lifetime appointment with no review board.

Over time, he grew more unpopular. Protesters in recent months openly chanted for his death. Think about that. In a country where dissent can get you jailed, tortured, or killed, people were shouting for the supreme leader to die. That’s not casual anger. That’s desperation.

So when news broke that he was gone, I imagined some quiet rooms in Tehran where people exhaled. Maybe they didn’t celebrate in the streets. Fear doesn’t vanish overnight. But I doubt many tears were shed.

Some will say killing a head of state sets a dangerous precedent. Maybe. International politics is not Sunday school. It’s rough, messy, and full of shadows. But there’s also this: when a leader has the blood of thousands on his hands, he cannot expect a soft landing. You reap what you sow.

I stand with Trump and Netanyahu on this one. Not because I enjoy war. Not because I cheer bombs. But because I refuse to romanticize a regime that murdered its own people. If a government slaughters 7,000 of its citizens in weeks, possibly 36,500, that government forfeits the moral high ground. It forfeits sympathy.

Khamenei grabbed power and held it at bloody cost. He outmaneuvered rivals. He expanded his office. He embedded loyalists everywhere. He survived plots and purges. He lasted 35 years. But even iron grips rust.

In the end, he faced the music. No violin played. No choir sang. The man who told rioters to be “put in their place” has now been put in his. History is not always kind, but it is often blunt. And on this blunt fact, I am clear: when a ruler builds a throne on bodies, he should not be shocked when the floor gives way.

 

For readers interested in a separate line of thought, the titles in my “Brief Book Series” are available on Google Play. Read them here on Google Play: Brief Book Series.