The Iranian Regime’s Best Enemy
The US-Israeli war on Iran was a godsend to a regime whose legitimacy was threadbare after the winter's protests. With the war resumed, what does the gift do to the regime, and to the Iranians?
Before the US-Israeli war with Iran resumed this week, for six days in July, the Islamic Republic of Iran buried the man the United States and Israel had killed four months earlier. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, supreme leader for more than three decades, died on 28 February, when a joint American and Israeli airstrike hit his office in Tehran on the opening morning of the war.
Islamic custom would have put him in the ground within days. Instead the regime waited until the bombing paused and staged the burial as a set piece. Khamenei lay in state on 4 July, the day the United States marked 250 years of independence. The ceremonies fell inside Muharram, the Shia month of mourning for the seventh-century martyrdom of Imam Hussein, and the casket was draped in a flag said to have flown over Hussein’s shrine.
