Death Comes to Khamenei

National Review Online

Sunday, March 01, 2026

 

From its inception, the Islamic Republic of Iran’s very identity has been based on a commitment to push Israel into the Mediterranean Sea and see the “Great Satan,” the United States of America, brought low. “Death to Israel,” Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, routinely shouted in a stale call-and-response to the captive Iranian people. “Death to America.”

 

Well, death has finally come for Khamenei. The despot at the top of Iran’s clerical hierarchy since 1989 met his fate at the hands of the nations that he devoted his life to destroying. But Khamenei is hardly alone.

 

According to Fox News’ Jennifer Griffin’s Pentagon sources, over 40 senior Iranian security and regime figures were killed in the opening sorties of the war in the early morning hours on Saturday. Khamenei is joined in the afterlife by, at least, his defense minister, the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and several senior justice, intelligence, and counterterrorism officials.

 

We should not forget the Americans who were the victims of Khamenei’s terror.

 

Figures close to Khamenei himself bragged about the future supreme leader’s role in the 1983 Marine barracks bombing in Beirut, which killed 241 U.S. service personnel. Along with members of Iran’s senior leadership, Khamenei was directly implicated in the 1996 murder of 19 Americans at the Khobar Towers complex in Saudi Arabia. In 2019, the Pentagon revised its estimate of the number of Americans killed as a direct result of the Iranian regime’s material support for insurgents in Iraq upward to 603.

 

When the Iranian regime under Khamenei wasn’t murdering American troops, attempting to assassinate foreign dignitaries on U.S. soil, and putting into motion plots to murder American public servants, including President Trump, his thugs were ruthlessly subjugating the Iranian people. According to President Trump, Khamenei’s thugs killed another 32,000 innocents in his final, desperate struggle to retain power. At long last, Khamenei can take no more lives.

 

There are many legitimate concerns about what kind of government the Iranian people will choose for themselves if the Iranian regime falls. The Iranian people have been spilling into the streets, celebrating the death of their longtime clerical oppressor. But there are early indications that the Islamic Republic’s disorganized security services are engaging once again in combat against anti-regime protesters.

 

We can’t know how this will play out; we do know that under Khamenei’s rule, Iran transformed itself into the world’s foremost exporter of Islamist terrorism. Khamenei was the terror master. Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu delivered him to justice, and they deserve the world’s gratitude.