Did Ayatollah Ali Khamenei deliberately ’embrace martyrdom’? Netanyahu and Trump’s US-Israel strike on Iran could backfire because…

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed in a US-Israeli airstrike.

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was targeted in a “precise, large-scale operation” and the elimination of the leader of the “terror axis” has brought to an end a “decades-long chapter,” the IDF said on Sunday. Along with Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, Secretary of the country’s Defence Council Ali Shamkhani, and Mohammad Pakpour, chief commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, were also killed in the deadly and joint US-Israeli strike.

Earlier on Saturday, Israel and the US launched joint strikes on Iran, including attacks on “dozens of military targets” carried out as part of a “wide, coordinated, and joint offensive” against the (Iranian) regime aimed at eliminating existential threats to the State of Israel over time.

According to media reports, the United States and Israel have collaborated on an operation intended to instigate regime change within Iran as well as terminate the rule of the clerics. However, experts believe that this significant move could have the opposite effect. It could potentially strengthen the clerical establishment in Iran and undermine the strategic objectives of Israel and the US.

Diplomatic expert Brahma Chellaney stated, “Revenge in Middle Eastern cultures (both Sunni and Shiite) is deeply embedded. By assassinating Iran’s supreme leader, Trump and Netanyahu have made their regime-change military mission more complicated and challenging. Ayatollah Khamenei’s killing has created a volatile moment that taps directly into Shiite concepts of martyrdom and resistance. In Shiite political culture, the killing of a supreme leader by foreign forces is immediately filtered through the Ashura narrative — the martyrdom of Imam Hussein at Karbala. What might otherwise have been a leadership decapitation is thus recast as sacred sacrifice.”

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According to Chellaney, Ayatollah Khamenei’s death has led to an unstable period within Shi’a ideologies concerning martyrdom and resistance. The killing of a supreme leader by non-Iranian powers will be viewed (and responded to) within the broader context of the Ashura narrative by Shi’a Muslims – specifically, the martyrdom of Imam Hussein at Karbala.

“By declaring 40 days of national mourning and framing Khamenei’s death as shahadat (martyrdom), the regime invokes the principle of mazloumiat — the virtue of being the oppressed party. Mourning becomes mobilization. The blood of the martyr demands justice. Tehran is seeking to transform public grief into a binding “blood debt.” Dissent can now be branded complicity with the killers of the supreme leader,” the post further read.

Revenge in Middle Eastern cultures (both Sunni and Shiite) is deeply embedded. By assassinating Iran’s supreme leader, Trump and Netanyahu have made their regime-change military mission more complicated and challenging.
Ayatollah Khamenei’s killing has created a volatile moment…
— Dr. Brahma Chellaney (@Chellaney) March 1, 2026

The post on XX further reads, “This dynamic complicates any hope of rapid regime collapse. Rather than weakening the system, decapitation risks militarizing it. After Khamenei’s death, Iran could drift toward a more explicit military theocracy. Regime change depends on delegitimizing the ruling order in the eyes of its own people. But by unleashing the revenge factor, Trump and Netanyahu have shortsightedly handed Tehran a unifying grievance powerful enough to override internal fractures. Instead of accelerating collapse, the strike risks consolidating the regime. The outcome in Iran, however, will ultimately hinge on which force proves stronger: the regime’s weaponization of martyrdom or the public’s exhaustion of ideological rule.”

This means that at this point in time it is thought to be too difficult to openly oppose clerical rule. Those who attempt to demonstrate or otherwise oppose the regime will be considered traitors working with foreign enemies and could receive harsh consequences, including capital charges, regardless of their prominence or influence.

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