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The appointment of Mojtaba Khamenei was welcomed by Yemen’s Houthi rebels, who are backed by the Iranian regime.

“We congratulate the Islamic Republic of Iran, its leadership and people, on the selection of Sayyid Mojtaba Khamenei as Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution at this important and pivotal juncture,” the group said in a statement on Telegram.

Mojtaba Khamenei’s elevation marks the first time since the 1979 Islamic revolution that Iran’s supreme leadership has passed from father to son.

It is a development likely to ignite debate inside Iran about the emergence of a dynastic system in a state founded explicitly to overthrow hereditary rule after the shah.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who ruled for 37 years, was killed in a US-Israeli strike on Tehran on 28 February, on the first day of the war with Iran.

Across Iran’s political and security establishment, officials moved swiftly to welcome the appointment of Mojtaba Khamenei as the country’s new supreme leader.

The Revolutionary Guards declared they stood ready to follow him, signalling broad backing from the country’s core institutions.

Earlier in the day, in a post on X in Farsi, the Israeli military said it would continue pursuing every successor of Ali Khamenei and would pursue every person who sought to appoint a successor for him.

For many analysts, Khamenei’s appointment is a symbolic move designed to make the regime still appear strong and determined not to bow to western pressure.

The 56-year-old cleric has never held elected office nor formally occupied a senior position within Iran’s government. He has spent much of his life at the centre of power in Iran while remaining largely out of public view.

To his supporters, Khamenei represents continuity with the ideological line established by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and maintained by his father. To critics, his rise raises uncomfortable questions about the concentration of power – and the possibility of hereditary leadership in a state founded in revolt against monarchy.

Oil prices surged more than 25% on Monday to their highest levels since mid-2022, as major Middle Eastern oil producers cut supply because they cannot safely send shipments through the strait of Hormuz to refiners worldwide.

Traffic through the strait was largely closed after Iran attacked at least five ships, with a limited number of tankers transiting, choking off a key artery accounting for about 20% of global oil and LNG supply.

#khamenei #mojtaba #son #iran #leader #rule

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Trump Suits In Favor of Wrapping Up the War. But What’s Next?

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After years of arrests, disappearances and mass killings of protesters, the hatred in Iran from some quarters for the hardline, oppressive governing regime had boiled into such a desperate rage that many believed Trump’s promise that the US would “come to their rescue”.

Now, after a fortnight of war, with US and Israeli airstrikes killing hundreds as they hit residential blocks, shops, fuel depots and even a school, the mood is changing.

“They are also lying! Like the regime has been lying to us,” said Amir, a student at the University of Tehran. “You are all worse than each other.”

The anti-regime protester has let himself hope for more from the US and Israel, which on the first day of the war had swiftly killed Iran’s most feared and powerful man, the supreme leader.

Yet the regime lives on, with Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s son quickly appointed to replace him, while Israel has widened and intensified its attacks on the country of more than 90 million people.

“We’re tense. We are really tense,” said Amir. “I feel worse when I am alone. Khamenei’s death has left us with this weird sense of emptiness. Like I am now forced to think about the future, which seems so chaotic right now. We never got to look at him in the eye. He died just like that? Without facing justice for what he did to us?”

The turning point for Amir was the Israeli strikes on fuel depots in Tehran last week, with one attack on the Shahran oil depot overshadowing the capital with black smoke. A rain shower later covered trees, homes and cars with layers of toxic oil.

“I genuinely believe now they [the US and Israel] didn’t have a plan. I was still hoping I was wrong, but the Shahran attack changed the way I look at this war right now,” he said.

“If the regime is what you want to hit, even if you think these depots were used by the regime, where do you draw the line? What about us, the ordinary Iranians? We rely on this civil infrastructure. Why take away our ability to govern in the future? Who can rebuild utter ruins?”

Amir said he now had constant anxiety about Iran “turning into another Iraq”, a country the US invaded in 2003, promising freedom but delivering a civil war.

Israeli leaders have also previously called on Palestinians in Gaza and the Lebanese people to rise up against oppression, only to later kill them in large numbers.

“My heart is so heavy,” said Amir. “I don’t even have tears left. Only anger and more anger. At this regime, and them,” he added, referring to the US and Israel.

Others people also have a shift in their attitudes towards the war, especially after the attack on oil depots, but also after seeing images of the country’s heritage sites damaged.

#Ali #Khamenei #son #trump #war #killing

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Most Iranians have lived their whole lives under the Iranian regime, which took power in a 1979 revolution that toppled the monarchy, only to replace it with autocratic clerics.

It is hard to assess support for the government in a country with such a heavily restricted media climate, and where open dissent can mean jail and death.

Yet, for almost two decades, protest movements have managed to thrive, often sparked by political unrest, a sudden rise in fuel prices, economic turmoil or the repression of women’s rights.

In 2009, in what was known as the Green movement, hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets over disputed presidential elections. The protests were met with a bloody state crackdown.

In 2022, one of most powerful uprisings, the Woman, Life, Freedom movement, was sparked by the death in custody of Mahsa Amini over her alleged improper wearing of the hijab.

The most recent wave of protests began in late December. They began as small-scale strikes in Tehran’s bazaar over plunging currency. As they spread into countrywide rallies of mass upset, security forces launched one of their deadliest crackdowns, killing thousands.

An Iranian doctor who treated protesters in January for gunshot wounds said he still had some hope the war would “at least result in real change”.

“What we fear most is the war stopping now in its current stage,” he said. “Then we’ll be left with the same people who massacred us last month … only stronger.”

But many others in the anti-regime movement are hearing reports of newborn babies being killed by the US and Israeli strikes, and conclude simply that now three governments, rather than one, are killing Iranians.

A protester in Tehran said: “A significant portion of the people I’ve been speaking to, after witnessing the killing of civilians, have altered their perception of military intervention.”

#Ali #Khamenei #son #trump #war #killing

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Does Trump Bog Down In Iran?

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Trump has again said that the US has “total control over the strait of Hormuz”, adding that Iran’s leadership was so hobbled by infighting that it was unclear who was in charge.

But the US president’s claim seemed questionable in the face of the seizure of two container ships by Iranian commandos and a US report warning it could take six months to clear the strait of mines.

Trump’s comments on Thursday came after US special forces boarded a stateless oil tanker in the Indian Ocean, which the Pentagon claimed was carrying Iranian crude oil.

The military operation took place hours after Iran’s seizure of the two container ships, with the two sides continuing to impose competing blockades on the strait, keeping global oil prices at about $100 a barrel.

While US forces have proved capable of stopping ships coming out of Iranian ports, they have still not demonstrated the capacity to open the strait to vessels coming from ports in allied Gulf states.

The impact of the dual blockades has been compounded by the presence of sea mines in the strait. In a briefing to Congress, the Pentagon warned it could take up to six months to clear all the suspected mines from the sea routes.

The report said approximately 20 mines were thought to have been placed in the strait, some deposited by small boats, and others manoeuvred into place remotely, making them harder to locate.

The Pentagon’s warning suggested that the impact of the war on the global economy could linger long after any peace deal was agreed.

A Pentagon spokesperson described the report as “inaccurate” but did not provide specific objections. In his Truth Social post, Trump said that US minesweepers were working “at a tripled up level” and that he had ordered the US navy “to shoot and kill” any boat mining the waterway. “There is to be no hesitation,” said Trump.

Fatih Birol, the head of the International Energy Agency, said in a CNBC interview that the world was facing “the biggest energy security threat in history”.

#trump #iran #khamenei #IRGC #ceasefire

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Hezbollah has not been a participant in the talks and bouts of fighting have continued throughout the most recent truce. On Wednesday an Israeli strike killed Amal Khalil, a well-known Lebanese journalist covering southern Lebanon.

Separately, Trump was asked how long he was willing to wait for a peace deal with Iran and he replied: “Don’t rush me.”

“Their navy is gone. Their air force is gone, their anti-aircraft is gone (…) maybe they loaded up a little bit during the two-week hiatus, but we’ll knock that out in about one day, if they did,” he added.

“I want to make the best deal. I could make a deal right now (…) but I don’t want to do that. I want to have it everlasting,” Trump said.

Iran has refused to attend peace talks with the US in Pakistan, a snub that Trump attributed to a lack of consensus in Tehran on negotiating strategy.

The Iranian regime said it would not attend talks while the US was violating a Pakistani-brokered ceasefire, in particular during the imposition of a naval blockade.

Trump agreed to an “indefinite” extension of the ceasefire on Tuesday and, despite the suspension of talks, he claimed on Thursday that the US had a firm grip on events in the strait of Hormuz, the narrow channel between the Gulf and the Indian Ocean through which a fifth of the world’s oil and liquified fossil gas is transported.

Iran’s current supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, appears not to be as all-powerful as his father, Ali, who was killed by Israeli missiles in the first seconds of the surprise US-Israeli joint attack on 28 February, which triggered the current conflict.

Mojtaba Khamenei was also seriously wounded in the attack, but the New York Times on Thursday cited senior Iranian officials who claim that he remains “mentally sharp and engaged”.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) meanwhile appear to have greater influence in a more collective leadership, making it more hawkish overall, but it is far from clear that the regime is riven by policy disagreements.

The IRGC naval command said that the two detained ships – the Greek-owned Epaminondas and the Panamanian-flagged MSC Francesca – had endangered maritime security “by operating without the necessary permits and tampering with navigation systems”, suggesting that they had turned off their location transponders.

#trump #iran #khamenei #IRGC #ceasefire

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Mojtaba Khamenei: the Strait of Hormuz Remains Under Iran’s Control

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Iran’s supreme leader has broken his recent silence with a defiant statement hailing Iran’s control over shipping in the strait of Hormuz and vowing to guard the country’s nuclear and missile programmes.

“Today, two months after the largest military deployment and aggression by the world’s bullies in the region, and the United States’ disgraceful defeat in its plans, a new chapter is unfolding for the Persian Gulf and the strait of Hormuz,” Mojtaba Khamenei said in a statement read by a state television anchor.

The statement said Tehran would secure the Gulf region and eliminate what he described as “the enemy’s abuses of the waterway”, and that “new management of the strait will bring comfort and progress for the benefit of all the nations of the region and economic blessings will being joy to the hearts of the people”.

Iran has sought to extract a price for being attacked by exerting control over the strait, the narrow waterway through which about one-fifth of global oil typically transits.

Speaking to mark Persian Gulf Day in Iran, Khamenei also vowed that Iran would “guard its modern technological capacities – from nano to bio to nuclear and missile – as their national capital and will guard it like their maritime land and air borders”.

No recording or visual sighting of Khamenei has been broadcast since he was appointed supreme leader in early March.

Reports have suggested that he was severely injured in the bombing that killed his 86-year-old father and predecessor on 28 February. He is said to be in hospital being treated for injuries.

His new statement suggests Iran is determined to implement a new fees regime in the strait that it will present as benefiting the entire region as a belated assertion of regional sovereignty.

Since 13 April the US has mounted a counter-blockade designed to stop oil tankers moving in or out of Iranian ports, seizing up the Iranian oil industry.

With Pakistan-mediated talks at an impasse, there is little sign of either blockade being lifted, pushing the oil price above $120 a barrel. Vessel traffic levels are still extremely low, sometimes as low as three ships a day compared with 120–140 in normal conditions.

“Foreigners who maliciously covet it [the strait] from thousands of kilometres away have no place there except at the bottom of its waters,” Khamenei’s statement said.

The strait’s closure has put pressure on Trump, as oil and petrol prices have rocketed before crucial midterm elections, as well as on his Gulf allies, which use the waterway to export their oil and gas.

#khamenei #strait #hormuz #iran #control

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Trump’s admission on Wednesday that he knew no short way out of the impasse pushed oil prices close to $125 a barrel – as high as during the first weeks of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Maj Gen Mohsen Rezaee, the military adviser to the supreme leader, wrote on his X account: “The siege scenario will fail and Iran will never lose the strait of Hormuz. History will record that the Iranian nation sank the superpower of America in the Persian Gulf and the Sea of ​​Oman.

Both the field and diplomacy are moving forward with the coordination of the leader of the revolution and the support of the people.”

The world considers the strait an international waterway, open to all without paying tolls, and Gulf Arab nations, chief among them the United Arab Emirates, have decried Iran’s control of the strait as akin to piracy.

Iran has proposed that talks with the US on its nuclear programme be parked while both sides agree terms for allowing ships to resume passage along the strait.

In Iran the foreign ministry has urged its parliament to recognise that Iran’s plans being hatched in conjunction with Oman do not require fresh Iranian legislation. It is also urging that Iran avoid terms such as “tolls”, and instead assert its pre-existing right to charge fees for services rendered.

Rubio, and the UK foreign secretary, Yvette Cooper, held talks in Washington on Wednesday about the strait.

An email sent by the state department to embassies reported by the Wall Street Journal suggested the US was trying to become involved in largely European-led plans for the oversight of the strait once the conflict ends.

The US is offering to coordinate diplomacy and communications between countries using the strait by reviving and broadening a 12 nation International Maritime Security Construct, a pre-existing naval operation set up in after threats to shipping by the Iranian navy.

#khamenei #strait #hormuz #iran #control

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Kuwait Airport Hit While Trump Sells “Peace Talks” With a Ghost

Iran just punched a hole in the map the White House is trying to sell as a cease-fire. Kuwait’s army says an Iranian drone strike hit Terminal 1 of Kuwait International Airport, killing at least one person, injuring others and forcing flights to be suspended or diverted before partial operations could resume from another terminal. So much for “stability in the Gulf.”

At the same time, Trump is telling The New York Post that Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei — unseen in public since he was reportedly injured in earlier U.S.–Israeli strikes — is personally involved in talks to end the war and that he hopes to meet him.

Washington and Tehran both insist the cease-fire still exists, even as they trade strikes and accuse each other of “aggression” and “retaliation.” The war is officially paused; the missiles apparently didn’t get the memo.

CENTCOM says Iran fired missiles and drones at Kuwait, Bahrain and even civilian ships, and that all attacks on U.S. forces “failed” thanks to interceptions or mid‑air failures.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, meanwhile, are boasting they targeted the U.S. Fifth Fleet HQ in Bahrain and an American vessel called the Panaya, claiming retaliation for U.S. hits on an Iranian ground control station on Qeshm Island.

Both sides swear they’re acting in “self‑defense,” which in 2026 mostly means “we hit first, but only because of what you did second.”

Around the edges, the rest of the board is shaking. Israel is escalating evacuations and strikes in southern Lebanon as U.S.-mediated talks with Beirut stumble on in Washington.

Oil prices are climbing again on every new headline about missiles, drones and Hormuz, because traders believe satellite imagery more than they believe any “de‑escalation” briefing.

So the picture is this: a damaged civilian terminal in Kuwait, U.S. and Iranian forces trading fire while insisting they’re honoring a cease-fire, a “supreme leader” rumored injured and negotiating offstage, and an American president talking about a historic meeting while the region watches the sky for the next wave of drones.

The peace process is happening in interviews; the war is happening on runways.

#iran #usa #kuwait #war #trump #khamenei #gulf #oil

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Iran’s Funeral Diplomacy: Martyrdom, Threats and Leverage

Iran is about to bury Ali Khamenei and turn his grave into a stage for nuclear bargaining and regional intimidation.

Next week’s funeral in Mashhad is being packaged as a regime stress test and a loyalty referendum in one.

Officials promise “tens of millions” in the streets, the largest event Tehran has ever seen. Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf — now also wearing the hat of “head of the revenge and funeral delegation” — is calling on Iranians to “write a glorious new page” and to shout for “blood vengeance” for their late leader.

The grief isn’t private, it’s a mobilization order.

Even the family tragedy is being fed into the script. The regime choreographed a farewell ceremony for Khamenei’s daughter‑in‑law and his wife, both mortally wounded in the strike that opened Operation “Lion’s Roar,” the attack that killed the supreme leader. Their funerals will be folded into Khamenei’s own.

Mojtaba Khamenei, the son and designated successor, pointedly skipped the goodbye — a sign of how carefully he’s curating his image as leader, not mourner, before the official oath.

Foreign guests will be carefully chosen: Pakistan’s prime minister Shehbaz Sharif and a senior figure from China’s standing committee are expected to attend, signaling who Tehran still counts as partners.

Around the ceremony, the security machine is turning mourning into a threat display. The “Khatam al‑Anbiya” emergency command has publicly warned Israel and the United States against “any miscalculation” during the funeral week, promising “severe and painful responses.”

Its commander, General Ali Abdollahi, urged “the enemies” to think very carefully — language that’s less about actual battlefield red lines and more about giving the regime an excuse to escalate if anything goes wrong.

In the same breath, the armed forces renewed their loyalty oath to the new leader, Ayatollah Sayyid Mojtaba Hosseini Khamenei, and doubled down on two pressure points: the nuclear file and the Strait of Hormuz.

They’re demanding the nuclear issue be pulled out of negotiations and insisting that the Hormuz shipping lane they’ve drawn is under Iran’s “exclusive sovereignty.” Any ship that strays from that track, they warn, will be treated as a target.

So you get four layers at once: a mass funeral designed to project legitimacy at home, open threats to Israel and the U.S. to deter any strike in a moment of vulnerability, a nuclear posture that demands de‑linking the program from talks, and a maritime doctrine that treats one of the world’s key chokepoints as domestic waters.

The regime is trying to turn Khamenei’s burial into a binding contract: loyalty inside Iran, deference in the Gulf, and respect for its nuclear red lines — or else.

For everyone watching from the outside, the translation is simple. Iran is not using the transition to soften its stance. It’s doubling down, wrapping missiles, centrifuges and shipping lanes in black banners and religious slogans. The funeral is not just an end — it’s the launch event for Mojtaba Khamenei’s version of the same project.

#Iran #Khamenei #Tehran #nuclear #Hormuz #China #Pakistan #war #regime #fakeDemocracy

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Gone With the Faith

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In the small hours of Friday the police roadblocks, stalls, posters and army vans were starting to appear across Tehran as millions of Iranians prepared to attend the long-delayed six-day funeral ceremony for Ali Khamenei’s, Iran’s supreme leader for 36 turbulent years.

Khamenei was killed in the opening salvo of the US-Israeli attack on the country in February, and the funeral is intended to be an epic display of personal mourning, national power, resilience and social cohesion.

Small groups of mourners carrying flags were gathering along the roads festooned with the red fist, the symbol of the funeral alongside the slogan “We must rise”. At a ceremony dedicated to the families of martyrs, Khamenei’s coffin was displayed.

Iran’s first vice-president, Mohammad Aref, who is the lead funeral organiser, described the ceremony, which begins on Saturday in Tehran and will end with Khamenei’s burial on Thursday in Mashhad, as “the most important event of this century” and the most attended event since the 1979 revolution.

The funeral’s scale has been conceived to relay political and religious messages of resistance to the rest of the world. The former supreme leader’s body, aAt the request of Iraqi politicians, Khamenei’s body will also be carried through the Iraqi Shia cities of Karbala and Najaf.

Despite the many posters of Khamenei’s son and successor, Mojtaba Khamenei, walking with his father in a garden, projecting continuity, Mojtaba is not expected to make an appearance at his father’s funeral. He was severely injured in the same US-Israeli strike on a government residence in Tehran at a little after 8am local time on 28 February that killed many of his family.

It killed Ali Khamenei, his daughter and her husband, Mojtaba’s wife and his 14-month-old daughter.

The extent of Mojtaba’s injuries are unknown and he has so far issued only written statements, including one that distanced himself from the ceasefire negotiations, but sanctioned their continuance.

Israel’s defence minister Katz threatened to kill him this week, saying he was marked for death, remarks that prompted hardliners to call for a re-examination of Iran’s fatwa against possession of nuclear weapons.

Mohammad Ghalibaf, Iran’s chief negotiator and speaker of the still suspended parliament, said in an eve-of-funeral message: “We must rise up and convey the nation’s call for bloodshed to the world so that the world knows that the honourable and noble nation of Iran will not remain silent in the face of oppression and arrogance and will not spare the blood of its imam.

“Iran stands on the threshold of creating one of the greatest scenes in its history, a day when a nation, with hearts full of love, loyalty and the pain of separation, comes to bid farewell to a great man.”

The public funeral will begin on Saturday – as the US marks the 250th anniversary of its declaration of independence – at Tehran’s Grand Mosalla mosque, where Khamenei’s body will lie in state alongside the bodies of his relatives.

#chief #supreme #funeral #khamenei

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The vast mosque complex has hosted many state religious ceremonies.

All week, workers have been redecorating the vast building and there has been a heavy police presence around the area. The funeral had been planned for early March but the war with US and Israel precluded such a large gathering.

Iran’s foreign ministry spokesperson Baghaei has accused European countries of standing on the “wrong side of history” and called their stance on the US-Israeli attacks on Iran “truly shameful”.

A 6-miles procession through central Tehran is planned for Monday from Imam Hossein Square to Azadi Square, the site of the 1979 revolution that ultimately led to the establishment of the Islamic Republic that Khamenei led after the death in 1989 from natural causes of the first supreme leader, Ruhollah Khomeini.

The mayor of Tehran, Alireza Zakani, has described Monday’s procession as “the largest gathering in the city’s history” and forecast about 20 million people will attend. Approximately 60% of Iran’s population of 90 million had known no other supreme leader.

On Tuesday, Khamenei’s body will be taken to the holy city of Qom, travelling between the shrine of Fatima Masumeh and the Jamkaran mosque. Temperatures are expected to reach about 40C.

It will then go to the Iraqi Shia strongholds of Karbala and Najaf on Wednesday. The foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, has visited both cities to consult on the ceremony that is intended to demonstrate Khamenei’s role as a spiritual leader of Shia Muslims.

With the funeral taking place during a 60-day ceasefire with the US that is intended to reopen the strait of Hormuz and allow for talks, the organisers intend that the event will show Iranians united behind its much-changed leadership as they seek to extract concessions from US negotiators.

Officials have declared government and private offices in Tehran closed from Saturday to Monday, while traffic restrictions will place pressure on the city’s metro system.

Mourners are being asked to leave their cars on the edge of the capital to prevent the normally choked Tehran roads from grinding to a standstill. Tehran’s airspace will also close on Monday and jets will patrol for any sign of an Israeli air attack.

The funeral organisers, aware that a glorification of Khamenei’s life without any acknowledgment of the current economic suffering of millions of Iranians could provoke a backlash, have put up posters proclaiming “a bright future for Iran”, alongside the more religious message “he must rise”.

In one of his last speeches, on 17 February, Khamenei referenced this Shia symbol of defiance, saying: “Someone like me does not pledge allegiance to someone like Yazid.

A nation with the culture of Iran does not pledge allegiance to corrupt leaders like those in America.”

#chief #supreme #funeral #khamenei

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📰 Khamenei’s Last Tour: The Ayatollah Franchise Goes on the Road

Iran is staging a six‑day state funeral for Ali Khamenei, the man who ran the country for nearly four decades and was killed in the opening salvo of the U.S.–Israeli war in late February.

Huge crowds are filing past his glass‑encased coffin in Tehran’s Grand Mosalla, kicking off a national mourning marathon that will drag his body through Tehran, Qom, Karbala, Najaf, and finally Mashhad.

Authorities waited more than four months — until a cease-fire with Washington was in place — before risking a mass event with all the regime’s senior brass in one place.

Analysts say the delay was about security, but it also reflects anxiety: you don’t pack the entire power structure into a funeral hall while U.S. and Israeli missiles are still in the air.

On camera, it’s a show of strength: millions expected on the streets, foreign delegations flying in from across the region, and wall‑to‑wall coverage on state TV.

The succession looks less like transition and more like inheritance. His son, Mojtaba Khamenei, has already been named supreme leader and promptly disappeared from public view, while the same security, clerical, and business networks remain bolted into place.

Even inside the loyalist camp, the funeral is not a unifying ritual. Hard‑liners accuse the leadership of selling out by signing a cease-fire with the U.S., asking on banners, “What happened to revenge for the blood of our martyred Imam?” — turning a state funeral into a passive‑aggressive referendum on whether the regime is still revolutionary enough for its own base.

From the outside, Washington and Jerusalem didn’t get regime change; they got a wounded system trying to prove it can absorb a direct decapitation strike and keep marching.

From the inside, many Iranians are watching the most expensive funeral in the country’s history while inflation, corruption, and repression keep grinding on — proof that even in death, the supreme leader still gets VIP treatment, and everyone else gets the bill.

#iran #khamenei #war #usisrael #middleeast #authoritarianism #regime #fakeDemocracy

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📰 Revenge in Tehran, Amnesia in Washington

For American media, Khamenei’s funeral is an episode in a six‑month war: a supreme leader killed in February, a wounded heir hiding in a bunker, crowds in Tehran chanting “revenge.” For Iran, it’s just one more turn in a story measured in centuries.

For the United States, a country celebrating 250 years while acting as if history began with its own Constitution, it’s a reminder that you don’t reshape thousand‑year trajectories with one missile strike and a press conference.

On Sunday, tens of thousands of mourners and senior officials packed the Grand Mosalla in Tehran, crowding around the flag‑draped coffin of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, killed in the opening salvo of the U.S.–Israeli war on Iran. They chanted for revenge, held his portrait aloft, and spilled outside to pray in the heat while volunteers handed out food and sprayed mist into the air.

It was textbook Islamic Republic theater: turn grief into spectacle, spectacle into proof of legitimacy. From a 250‑year American vantage point, it looks like a regime clinging to power. From a civilization that has outlived empires far larger than the U.S., it looks like another ritual in a very long archive.

Khamenei’s brothers appear in the official footage. IRGC chief Ahmad Vahidi arrives at the mosque complex, and black‑clad mourners surge toward him, chanting “revenge, revenge,” before security hustles him away. The image is designed for Western consumption: masses demanding retaliation, the Revolutionary Guards at the center, the state standing upright after a decapitation strike. It says: we are still here.

Supporters frame Khamenei as a man of conviction, “killed for what he believed in,” elevated from politician to martyr. Critics remind anyone willing to listen that his rule turned “Islamic Republic” into a contradiction in terms: a system that claims the word “republic” while ignoring every republican quality in practice.

The United States, at 250 years, treats the war that killed Khamenei as a decisive chapter in its own narrative of power: a successful strike, a wounded enemy, leverage at the negotiating table. It behaves as if Iran’s regime and society are props in that story.

But Shiite Islam has been woven into the region for more than a millennium, and Iran as a civilizational core predates American independence by thousands of years. The funeral that reads in New York as “climax” is, in Tehran’s long memory, another entry in a ledger of invasions, assassinations, uprisings and recoveries.

Trump’s worldview is the distilled version of that American solipsism: history starts when America acts, ends when America declares victory, and everything in between is judged by U.S. interests alone.

The funeral in Tehran exposes the limits of that logic. The missiles can kill a leader and maim his heir. They cannot erase the deep structures that produced them, nor the society that will outlast this war and the next president. The crowds chanting “revenge” are not just reacting to February; they are standing inside a timeline that will still be running when those 250 years of American dominance are a footnote in someone else’s history book.

#iran #us #khamenei #mojtaba #civilization #250years #authoritarianism #fakeRepublic

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📰 Khamenei’s Funeral: Gold Bounties, Ghost Leaders, and Israeli Bragging Rights

The funeral procession for Ali Khamenei and his family rolled through Tehran to the sound of the national anthem, after a static day of the coffin on display. The crowd did not come empty-handed. Stones were hurled at a Trump billboard labeled “the Great Satan.” Posters showed the faces of Trump, Laura Loomer, Ben Shapiro, Miriam Adelson, and Lindsey Graham inside red crosshairs, with the promise: “In the end, your head will be cut off.” Another banner openly advertised a bounty of roughly 500 kilograms of pure gold for whoever kills Trump — regime outrage, now with a price tag.

The legal system joined the chorus. Mohsen Rajai, reappointed by Mojtaba Khamenei to head the judiciary, vowed that the “criminal United States” which “murdered Ayatollah Khamenei” would not be let off the hook. This is Tehran’s official script: the Supreme Leader was assassinated by America, and revenge is a matter of national honor. The street chants match the line, only louder and cruder.

The guest list was its own message. Quds Force commander Esmail Qaani was filmed at the funeral — the only survivor from the famous front‑row photo at Qassem Soleimani’s 2020 burial. IRGC chief Ahmad Vahidi had to hitch a ride to bypass the gridlocked streets just to get close. And Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, long rumored dead and allegedly targeted for a strange “return” to power by Israeli and American planners, walked among the crowd very much alive. As for the new Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, there are only unverified hints of a presence; officially, the bunker remains in charge, but offscreen.

In Jerusalem, the mood was less mystical and more accountancy. Defense Minister Katz rushed to lock down the narrative: “The ayatollah Khamenei, whose funeral is taking place now, was eliminated by Israel because he initiated and led the plan to destroy Israel. The destroyer was destroyed.” Any future Iranian leader who tries to push similar plans, he warned, “will be thwarted as well.” The “Death to Trump” chants he branded a disgrace, proof of “the true nature of the ayatollahs’ regime behind the robes and smiles.”

Netanyahu, in his second Fox News interview in two days — Fox being Trump’s comfort channel — kept playing his favorite statistic: “80% of the Iranian people hate the regime,” but “there is still a minority they can take to the streets.” The prime minister insists he and Trump “see eye to eye on 99% of issues,” yet no meeting date exists. Jerusalem is signaling: we own the strike, we read the crowd, we are aligned with the current U.S. president — even as Tehran publicly prices his head in gold.

Between the gold bounty in Tehran and the credit‑claim in Jerusalem, one thing is clear: Khamenei’s coffin is not just a symbol of Iranian rage. It’s a ledger line in a war where both sides are competing over who gets to say, “We did this” — and who pays the political price when the crowd starts demanding the sequel.

#iran #israel #khamenei #trump #qods #netanyahu #revenge #fakeAccountability

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📰 Cease-Fire Over, Straits Closed: Trump’s “Quick” War That Never Ends

Three weeks after the U.S.–Iran cease-fire, American jets are again hitting Iranian military targets along the southeastern coast, officially to “protect shipping” in the Strait of Hormuz after attacks on three commercial vessels.

Traffic through the strait has halted, oil jumped about 5% to roughly $78 a barrel, and the head of the International Maritime Organization is now telling operators to avoid the waterway entirely.

On paper, the strikes are retaliation for “unjustified aggression” against tankers and crews. In practice, they blow a hole straight through the deal that was supposed to reopen Hormuz and park the war under a 60‑day negotiation window on uranium and the nuclear program.

Washington has already revoked the sanctions waiver on Iran’s oil — Tehran’s big prize from the cease-fire — and Iran claims to have answered with attacks on U.S. sites in Bahrain and Kuwait.

Trump, from the NATO summit in Turkey, says the cease-fire is “over,” promises to hit Iran “hard,” and insists this won’t return to full‑scale war because “it’s going to go very quickly.”

At the same time he boasts that “all” Iranian leaders are “gone,” calls himself “No. 1 on the kill list,” and watches as Mojtaba Khamenei’s account posts a doctored image of a snake crawling out of Trump’s signature on the cease-fire document. The funeral procession for Ali Khamenei moves from Iran to Najaf; the war procession moves from pause back to escalation.

Hormuz remains the leverage point. Mines, fast boats and land‑based launchers give Tehran the ability to choke off the energy lifeline of U.S. partners like Qatar and Saudi Arabia, and every “protective” strike deepens the message that transit is a bargaining chip, not a neutral right.

The cease-fire promised free passage; the reality is a narrow channel controlled by a country that just watched the man at the top of its system killed and is now being told the deal that followed his death is dead too.

Trump calls this denuclearization and insists it won’t “start again.” Tankers turning around in Hormuz, oil spiking, and Iranian media calling for “the official end” of the deal suggest something else: a war that never quite stops, and a corridor that keeps becoming the battlefield.

#iran #us #trump #hormuz #oil #khamenei #ceasefire #fakePeace

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📰 Funeral in Three Acts: A Corpse, Flying Stones, and a Price Tag on Trump

Ali Khamenei’s body has been on tour: mass ceremonies in Karbala and Najaf in Iraq, a military‑escorted flight to Mashhad — with one of the escorts reportedly an aging F‑5 fighter barely younger than the Islamic Republic itself — and a delayed burial in his hometown.

Authorities announced hours‑long postponements and blamed “huge crowds” in Karbala, even as reports of a strike on the Tehran–Mashhad rail line surfaced the same night. Religious tradition demands a fast burial; the regime needed time — to appoint new leaders, stabilize the inner circle, and choreograph a succession under fire.

Saudi‑owned Al Arabiya highlighted the trick behind the long goodbye: instead of chemical embalming, the system relied on deep refrigeration at very low temperatures to slow decay. Islamic law wants the dead in the ground quickly; the political calendar wanted a week‑long spectacle across multiple cities and borders.

In a state whose sole claim to legitimacy is religious, the taboo got bent quietly to fit the schedule.

During the Tehran procession, hardline supporters physically attacked President Masoud Pezeshkian, tried to push him down and shouted “death to the appeaser,” forcing his guards to drag him out as he stumbled, visibly shaken.

Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, identified with the moderate camp, was hit by a stone and chased down an alley by flag‑waving, screaming men calling for his murder. Regional sources told CNN and others that Khamenei’s successor, his son Mojtaba, was not expected to appear at any funeral event — not even the private burial.

In Mashhad and Qom, huge English banners appeared: “Kill Trump – $100 Million Iranian Bounty.” Iran International and other outlets documented billboards and hotel‑front signs promising a nine‑digit reward for anyone who assassinates the U.S. president, turning mourning into an open contract killing campaign.

Kayhan, the supreme leader’s mouthpiece, ran an editorial under the line “I want Trump’s head,” whose editor urged the state to declare Trump, his inner circle and even the pilots who carried out strikes as legitimate targets, and to formalize a cash prize for whoever kills them — claiming more than $100 million has already been raised “by the public.”

The front page message was blunt: “Trump does not have to stay alive.”

The funeral was sold as proof of unity and devotion. What it delivered was a president pelted with stones, a foreign minister chased down an alley, and millions marching under banners that turn a sitting U.S. president into a line item: body, price, deadline.

#iran #khamenei #funeral #trump #bounty #succession #fakePiety

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Araghchi’s War Memoir: How Khamenei Was Killed, Who Decides the Ceasefire, and What Iran Will Never Sell

In his latest interview, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi basically laid out three things: how the assassination of Ali Khamenei exposed an ongoing intelligence breach, how the ceasefire with the US was really approved, and what parts of Iran’s nuclear program are non‑negotiable.

On the assassination, Araghchi says the strike that killed Khamenei at the opening of the war came through an intelligence gap “that still exists and hasn’t been fixed,” one that also distorts decision‑making today.

He describes the morning of the attack almost in real time: at 8 a.m. on Saturday he meets the president and tells him “there is an atmosphere of war.”

At 9 a.m. he goes to Khamenei’s office to brief his chief of staff, Ali Asghar Mir Hejazi, on the Geneva talks — and while he is talking about that war atmosphere, the office itself is hit. That’s how Iran’s top leader dies: under US‑Israeli strikes, while his foreign minister is mid‑sentence.

Araghchi says he only went down into the tunnels for meetings “once or twice,” because from a certain point they felt they had the situation under control and the number of senior government casualties was dropping.

He notes he has not met Mojtaba Khamenei — the son who stepped into the leadership role — at all since his appointment, and that only a very small circle has access to him. That’s a quiet way of saying: the war state is being run by a bunker elite even many ministers don’t see.

On the ceasefire, he says the initial truce with the US was not approved in a big, formal Supreme National Security Council forum but in smaller, tighter meetings.

The council session to ratify the memorandum of understanding on the 10‑point plan ran from 9 p.m. to 3 a.m., and Iran’s condition for accepting the ceasefire was that all ten clauses it proposed would be the basis: recognition of enrichment, lifting sanctions, control and fees over Hormuz, withdrawal of US forces, compensation for war damage, and binding UN Security Council language. In his telling, Tehran forced Washington to accept that framework; in Washington’s telling, none of the heavy items are actually implemented.

On the nuclear file, he says he told Trump directly that uranium enrichment “is not for sale,” because the Iranian people have endured 20 years of sanctions over it.

Trump went public insisting “there will be no uranium enrichment”; Araghchi repeats that enrichment is the line Iran will not cross. That’s the core collision: Trump wants a clean zero‑enrichment headline; Iran wants the war to end with enrichment legitimized and paid for.

Araghchi moves between describing a “12‑day war” and a “40‑day war,” which tracks with the two phases: the initial US‑Israeli air campaign, then the longer cycle that dragged Gulf states in.

He claims that during the conflict one Arab country threatened to attack Iran, and Iran responded by hitting it with missiles every day. He also reveals that before the war they had already defined a code name — “110” — for the scenario of the leader’s assassination, meaning the system had pre‑written protocols for the moment Khamenei was killed.

Taken together, the interview paints a picture of a state that sees itself as both victim and strategist: blindsided by an intelligence hole big enough for a decapitation strike, yet convinced it forced the US to accept its ten‑point ceasefire terms; insisting enrichment is untouchable, while watching Trump publicly deny that; led by a new supreme figure so insulated that even the foreign minister hasn’t met him. It’s less a confession than a warning: Iran thinks it survived “110,” and it thinks that gives it the right to keep fighting — and negotiating — on its own terms.

#iran #Araghchi #Khamenei #ceasefire #Hormuz #nuclear #war #fakeDemocracy

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Iran Is In No Hurry to Negotiate, Trump Chalked the Delay Up To Personal Animosity

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Iran, in the middle of an escalating five-month war with the US, continues to stumble from one internal crisis to another – whether it is over public executions, the rising cost of living, the alleged bias of the state broadcaster or even the post-midnight destruction of pavements outside liberal-leaning Tehran cafes.

Very little that happens in Iran, cultural or political, momentous or trivial, does so uncontested.

But there is now a growing threat of a long diplomatic deadlock, forged by mutual distrust in which neither side believes the other will stick to any agreement.

That impasse has occurred as the war broadens, drawing in Yemen, Iraq and now Egypt. In Iran, at least, the advocates of escalation are winning. As a result, a convergence of Iran’s conflicts, internal and external, becomes more likely.

Parts of the Trump administration and the Iranian opposition – including Reza Pahlavi, the son of the former deposed Shah – have never abandoned the belief that the Iranian government is on the brink of collapse.

What is true is that the picture of cohesive if brittle society presented by the millions attending the funeral of the supreme leader Ali Khamenei earlier this month revealed only one side of the public mood.

At a recent meeting of the supreme judicial council he argued: “Iran is engaged in a full-scale war. Today’s war is not just a war of missiles; the enemy has come to the conclusion that it cannot force the Iranian nation to surrender through military attacks. The most important battlefield today is the economy and livelihood of the people.

If economic pressures cause social discontent to form and this discontent spreads, the enormous social capital that the people have created in support of the system will be lost.”

Golshan Fathi, a Tehran human rights activist, recently wrote on her social media page: “The same sick cycle repeats (…) morning (…) the call to prayer, news of an execution (…) noon with power cuts, afternoon the water stops (…) dusk, the anxiety of war and renewed attacks on cities, and at midnight, the earth trembles.

Dissent in the form of political protest also exists, whether it is those inside jails or citizens in the squares of Isfahan protesting against the current wave of intimidatory public executions.

#iran #economy #trump #hormuz #khamenei

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On Monday the political bureau of the Nation’s Union party warned that ignoring the protests over the wave of executions could have “devastating consequences”, and urged academics and religious scholars to intervene to end this state violence.

Similarly a “we do not want war” statement signed by 268 political activists this month said they believed the overwhelming majority opposed war, and this should be tested in a public vote.

Another letter from 1,000 activists linked with the former president Mohammad Khatami warned “the contemporary experience of Iran is that war has no winners. Those who advocate negotiations should not be slandered.”

What unites these initiatives is a fear that diplomats are losing, and Iran is being edged into a forever war that can be portrayed as an Iranian-Arab war, a war that would be to Israel’s advantage.

Yet opposition to the whole principle of negotiation with America – fuelled by Trump’s own erratic behaviour – is being voiced by hardliners, in street rallies and more recently on unofficial billboards.

The sway of the hardliners lies less in their strength in parliament – many were elected on low turnouts and anyway have been deposed from key committees in parliament – but in the belief that a network of deep-state support exists in the military and in the office of the supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei.

The absence of Khamenei from public view makes it harder to resolve the controversy about whether the family sees any purpose in negotiations with America.

The crisis between the government and the broadcaster is now out in the open after interventions by Pezeshkian and Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the chief negotiator, were censored.

The government in a statement complained: “Censorship of the president’s speech, unilateral destruction of the government’s performance, and efforts to destroy the memorandum of understanding that was formed to get the country through the crisis and protect national interests are no longer media criticism; they are a stand against national cohesion, empathy, and unity.

“The question is clear: is the Iranian broadcasting system with the people, government, and interests of Iran or with those who benefit from division, tension, and polarisation?

The national media should be the voice of Iranian unity, not a platform for destroying the government and disrupting national understanding.”

There are calls for a complete overhaul of the organisation’s accountability when a new head is appointed this September. At one level the politics of the national broadcaster should not matter, since surveys suggest less than 12% of the country watch it.

The toll of the war on the economy has spread everywhere from the internet to tourism. All 400 hotels on Kish Island in the strait of Hormuz – the site of US bombing on Thursday – have shut. As many as 30,000 Iranians visited medical centres during the two wars in 2025 and 2026.

Civilian facilities such as the Bushehr meteorological centre have been almost destroyed and the Bushehr airport has become unusable.

The Chabahar maritime watchtower has been completely destroyed; 12 bridges and two tunnel openings have been damaged. This will take decades to repair.

#iran #economy #trump #hormuz #khamenei

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