Khamenei’s death feels surreal, but now a new future for Iran feels possible

“Khamenei is dead?” That was the first sentence at the top of every message I received Operation Epic Rage It unfolded. I was confused by the question mark at the end; Israel had already announced that it had verified that the body found under the rubble of the missile attack was a corpse Ayatollah Khamenei.

What’s even more confusing is that the question remained even as major news sites flashed the phrase “Khamenei is dead” on their screens.

Then it dawned on me that this was no longer a question. It was disbelief, as well as a rare mixture of mourning and celebration. It was a look into the surreal world that Iranians had come to live in, as if anything that happened in Iran was like sleepwalking into someone else’s nightmare.

And then there was a flood of messages filled with exclamation marks and fireworks emojis. The mood shifted from disbelief to jubilation. Iranians were dancing in the streetsThey honked their car horns and chanted, “Freedom! Freedom!”

They did not imagine that this moment would arrive so early, just a few hours after the epic Operation Fury, targeted with such precision that all the buildings surrounding Khamenei’s compound remained standing.

The longest-serving dictator of modern times, who ran a façade of invincibility and the ability to get rid of his opponents, is dead. His era of denying Iranians a sense of normalcy – a life lived without one’s personal choices – is over.

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The Islamic Revolution of 1979 suddenly upended normal life, barring women, banning bars and cinemas, segregating the sexes, and gradually turning public spaces into glorious cemeteries, with images of the “martyrs” of the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988) appearing on the horizon.

For those of us with fond childhood memories of parks filled with flower beds and fountains, and men selling toys and balloons on push carts, there is nothing like the Iran we knew. The Iran we loved changed slowly, then quickly, from a modern, forward-looking country to a scene out of an Islamic Mad Max movie.

Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei addresses the public on the occasion of the 47th anniversary of the Iranian Revolution according to Iranian state television in Tehran, Iran on February 9, 2026. (Press Office of the Iranian Leader/Anadolu/Getty Images)

But as Recent uprisings This showed that Iranians are flexible and creative. “They are like wheat in the field,” Rolof Beini, a famous photographer who tours Iran to capture its beauty, told my father. “They bow their heads to the coming storm and stand up immediately.”

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Life was not as smooth as Benny noticed. But he was right that Iran is a unique country. Longing for normalcy, Iranians began to quietly rebel, naming their young children Shahan — a name of Persian origin meaning royalty — instead of the regime-sanctioned Muhammad. They have made films that have won prizes in international competitions.

Be careful not to arouse anger The system’s ethics councilThey embedded their anger in plots depicting the tyranny of the regime through stories of divorce and broken families, or the suffering of a rebellious child, or a father dying of Alzheimer’s disease who forgets the unbearable present and lives in the past.

Normalcy was also a call in the song “Bray” (“For”) by Sharvin Hajpour. Hajipour, who rose to fame during the Women, Life and Freedom movement of 2022, sang among the towering trees lining Tehran’s famous Pahlavi Avenue, dogs barking and spending idle days lost in the eyes of her loved ones. Hajipour won a Grammy Award in 2023 in the category of Best Song for Social Change.

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It is too easy – and perhaps premature – to conclude that the mullahs were the cause of their demise.

But for a government based on the teachings of the Qur’an, The system was grossly immoral With unspeakable cruelty, Iranians are slaughtered in the streets or in isolated prison wards. Many of the detainees were never seen again. Many of those released were ghosts of their former selves.

Perhaps the greatest insult to the proud Iranians was the claims of nationalism by the clerics, who often wove beloved Iranian poetry into their hateful sermons. Nationalism is Iran’s most enduring ideology, and Iranians enthusiastically ridicule any pretension on the part of the clerics.

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“They do not represent me and my people,” is what I often heard in interviews with Iranians. “There is nothing Persian about the verses of God.” In the wake of the 12-day war, they insisted that they would not rally around the flag “because that is not our flag.”

Just as the flag of the Islamic regime replaced the ancient lion and sun flag, so the rule of the clergy was established from the beginning. In fact, it had no precedent Islamic history. Khomeini would angrily respond to those who came to kiss his robe and ask ordinary questions about running the country: “We did not stage a revolution to worry about tomato prices.” “Islam is the answer. It has it all.”

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Ironically, the Iranians’ rejection of Khomeini’s Islam was the reason for bringing together two ancient peoples. My sources in Iran speak of a growing bond between the two countries Iranian Jews And crowds of demonstrators. The phrase “Ma hameh ba ham hasteem” (“We are all in this together”) is now chanted as Israeli flags fly alongside the lion and sun flag across Europe and the United States. In this, history has come full circle from Cyrus the Great to the present.

A return to normal life may not be far behind.

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