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On February 28, the U.S. and Israel assassinated Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the 86-year-old Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, on with a fig of different leaders. On March 17, an Israeli aerial onslaught killed Ali Larijani, Secretary of Iran’s National Security Council. The adjacent day, Iran’s quality curate was killed. This is not the archetypal clip Iran’s elder subject and governmental leaders getting killed.
In January 2020, the U.S. assassinated Qassem Soleimani, 1 of the astir salient commanders successful the Revolutionary Guards. On June 13, 2025, Israel killed a big of Iranian subject leaders and atomic scientists, connected the archetypal time of the 12-day war. These killings are wide setbacks to Iran. But contempt losing its apical leaders and commanders, the Iranian authorities continues to relation portion its subject refused to halt warring against the U.S.-Israeli aggression. If Israel and the U.S. thought the decapitation strikes would pb to a authorities illness successful Iran, it doesn’t look to beryllium working.
Iran has a agelong contented of statecraft, and the halfway tenets of Shia Islam has remained a defining origin of authorities behaviour for centuries. Since the Safavid dynasty adopted Shia Islam arsenic the authoritative religion of the Persian empire, Iran (Persia) has been bulk Shia. And since the 1979 Islamic gyration that overthrew the Pahlavi monarchy, the revolutionary authorities came to remainder connected 2 pillars: governmental Shiism and nationalism. In Iran, martyrdom lies astatine the bosom of both. Shias venerate their martyrs, opening with Imam Ali. By assassinating Khamenei, Larijani and others, the U.S. and Israel person elevated them, successful the eyes of their supporters, to a higher realm of martyrdom.
The archetypal martyr
After Prophet Mohammed’s death, his followers divided implicit who should pb the ummah (the Muslim community). One faction backed Ali, the Prophet’s relative and son-in-law, arguing that the enactment should stay wrong his family. The different supported Abu Bakr, a adjacent companion of the Prophet, who became the archetypal Caliph. Ali aboriginal became the fourth. Those who rallied down Ali came to beryllium known arsenic Shias [Shi’at Ali], portion the followers of the Rashidun Caliphs (Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman and Ali) formed the Sunni tradition. Ali’s regularisation was marked by interior strife and helium was assassinated, becoming the archetypal martyr successful Shia memory. His lad Hassan, the 2nd Shia Imam, concisely assumed the Caliphate but abdicated nether threats from the Umayyads. Hussein, Ali’s younger son, refused to pledge loyalty to the Umayyad ruler, Yazid. In 680, Hussein and 72 of his followers were killed successful Karbala, successful today’s Iraq, by the forces of Yazid. Hussein, the 3rd Shia Imam, was beheaded and his caput was taken to Damascus, the Umayyad spot of power.
The Battle for Karbala holds tremendous value successful some Shia religion and governmental Shiism. For believers, Hussein, the Imam who refused to compromise adjacent astatine the outgo of his life, embodies the highest perfect of sacrifice. For governmental Shias, his defiance of the “corrupt” Yazid caliphate represents motivation courageousness successful the look of tyranny. (Eash year, Shias astir the satellite people Ashura, connected the 10th of Muharram, with processions commemorating the martyrdom of Hussein.) During the Islamic revolution, Ayatollah Khomeini invoked some sacrifice and courageousness to mobilise absorption to Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. The monarch, Khomeini argued, was the caller Yazid. He called connected Hussein’s followers, “the oppressed”, to rise. And they did. Millions, cutting crossed governmental currents, joined the uprising, forcing the Shah to flee. After the monarchy’s collapse, the Islamists captured the authorities successful 1979, and established the Islamic Republic.
Ideological core
After the revolution, galore experts and satellite leaders doubted that the theocratic authorities would endure. Within a year, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein launched invaded Iran, hoping to hasten the illness of the fledgling republic. The caller authorities was struggling to stabilise a fractured post-revolutionary order. Leftists, commercialized unionists, Islamists and liberals had each opposed the Shah, and the clergy’s consolidation of powerfulness deepened divisions wrong this coalition.
But Saddam’s penetration changed the equation. Iranians rallies down the flag; Saddam was formed arsenic the modern-day Yazid. The Islamic Republic moved to purge leftists and liberals astatine location without provoking immoderate regime-threatening backlash, portion the warfare was nether way. In effect, the struggle helped the clergy tighten its grip connected power. After Khamenei was killed connected February 28, 2026, Larijani repeatedly invoked the ideas martyrdom. He said, “the children of Imam Hussein fearfulness nothing”. After Larijani was killed, Mojataba Khamenei, Iran’s existent Supreme Leader, said, “shedding the humor of specified radical astatine the ft of the mighty histrion of the Islamic strategy volition lone marque it stronger”. Iran’s leaders cognize the post-revolutionary authorities faces its gravest situation successful 47 years. But their effect is not to springiness up the combat and flee, but to clasp the ideological halfway of the revolutionary authorities — martyrdom, sacrifice and vengeance.
