Qamar Bashir
The third dimension of Khamenei’s death lies in Karbala. In Shia Islam, the sacrifice of Imam Hussain, grandson of Prophet Muhammad, is not merely a seventh-century tragedy remembered through annual rituals. Karbala represents a permanent moral command: stand against tyranny, refuse submission to oppression and remain beside the victim even when resistance carries an unbearable personal cost.
The symbolism is now visible throughout Khamenei’s funeral ceremonies. His coffin is to travel through Qom, Najaf and Karbala before his burial in Mashhad. Black mourning flags recalling the martyrdom of Imam Hussain hang over Iranian streets. The journey itself connects Khamenei’s death with the religious geography and historical memory that have shaped Shia political consciousness for centuries.
Iran has consistently interpreted Palestine through this ideological prism. Palestinians have endured displacement, occupation, bombardment, hunger and repeated military devastation. Gaza has been reduced to rubble on a catastrophic scale, families have disappeared beneath destroyed buildings and civilian suffering has horrified much of the world. The confrontation has repeatedly expanded into Lebanon, spreading destruction across a region already exhausted by decades of conflict.
One may condemn particular tactics used by Hamas, Hezbollah or other armed organisations and still ask why these groups continue to exist and retain support. Their political justification is deeply connected to the unresolved Palestinian question. Resolve that conflict justly and the strategic architecture of armed resistance begins to lose its rationale. Without the wound, organisations created around resisting that wound face an inevitable crisis of purpose.
A credible two-state settlement could fundamentally transform the Middle East. Give Palestinians the right to choose their government, protect their social and religious traditions, preserve their language and maintain a recognised connection with their land. Once Palestinians possess dignity, political agency and a viable national future, the justification for maintaining a permanent kinetic posture against Israel will inevitably weaken.
Iran could have chosen silence. It could have followed the cautious path adopted by much of the Muslim world. Türkiye, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and numerous Muslim states have spoken for Palestine diplomatically, but none willingly absorbed the scale of military, economic and strategic consequences Tehran accepted by directly challenging the Israeli-American strategic order. Iran understood the price of its policy and still refused to retreat.
Had Tehran treated Palestinian suffering as somebody else’s problem, it might have secured economic comfort, sanctions relief and international accommodation. Yet a state that invokes Karbala cannot easily preach the sacrifice of Imam Hussain at home while remaining permanently silent when it believes another people are subjected to occupation, collective punishment and overwhelming military force abroad.
This explains why Khamenei’s martyrdom may prove strategically more powerful than his political life. His killing did not eliminate the philosophy of resistance associated with his leadership. It liberated that philosophy from the limitations of an individual ruler and embedded it more deeply in Iran’s national consciousness. His coffin, moving towards Qom, Najaf, Karbala and ultimately Mashhad, has itself become a travelling symbol of that narrative.
Iran’s military response subsequently demonstrated the logic of asymmetric warfare. Tehran did not need to match the United States aircraft for aircraft, carrier for carrier or dollar for dollar. It expanded the battlefield horizontally, imposed costs on military infrastructure supporting attacks against Iran and threatened strategic arteries upon which global economies depend. Conventional military superiority was confronted by calculated strategic disruption.
Iran’s calculation was brutally simple. It did not have to defeat the United States in a traditional battlefield contest; it only had to make continuation of the war economically, politically and strategically unbearable. By stretching the theatre of confrontation and exploiting regional dependencies, a militarily weaker state demonstrated how disproportionate costs could be imposed upon adversaries possessing vastly superior weapons and resources.
The war intended to fracture Iran instead strengthened its cohesion. The campaign justified by fear of an Iranian atomic bomb killed the religious leader whose fatwa had restrained nuclear weaponisation. The attempt to destroy a philosophy of resistance provided that philosophy with its most powerful martyr. These contradictions now hover over every funeral procession moving through Iran and Iraq.
The presence in Tehran of senior representatives from Russia, China, Pakistan, Iraq and other states adds another dimension to the moment. Iran was supposed to emerge isolated, humiliated and broken. Instead, as Khamenei lies in state, representatives of major powers and regional governments are standing before his coffin, while the funeral journey prepares to cross national borders and the great centres of Shia faith.
As Khamenei is carried towards his final resting place in Mashhad, the ultimate irony is difficult to escape. His enemies possessed superior aircraft, larger arsenals, advanced intelligence systems and enormous financial resources. Yet his death gave Iran something military technology could neither manufacture nor easily destroy: a renewed story of sacrifice, dignity and collective resistance.
The superpower possessed the larger arsenal, but the martyr left behind the stronger story. History repeatedly demonstrates that military power can destroy buildings, eliminate leaders and devastate economies, but it cannot always determine which narrative survives a war. In Khamenei’s case, the attempt to kill a leader may instead have immortalised his cause and strengthened the nation his death was intended to break.
The writer is Press Secretary to the President (Rtd),Former Press Minister, Embassy of Pakistan to France,Former Press Attaché to Malaysia and Former MD, SRBC .He is living in Michigan, USA
