Israel murdered Khamenei, yet the West fails to respect a nation in mourning

Israel murdered Khamenei, yet the West fails to respect a nation in mourning Submitted by Hamid Dabashi on Tue, 07/07/2026 - 23:12 Israel and its allies in the western media have no business trying to stoke divisions at this time of national mourning A mourner holds a flower and a portrait of Iran’s slain supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, at the start of his funeral ceremonies in Tehran on 4 July 2026 (Atta Kenare/AFP) Off As a real-time Persian passion play unfolds across Iraq and Iran for the funeral ceremonies of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei , one question remains paramount: what gives a European settler colony the audacity, the vulgarity, the vicious gall to fly over a sovereign nation’s territory and murder its supreme leader? The Israeli plot to assassinate Khamenei - which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tricked US President Donald Trump into joining, despite overwhelming American opposition to waging war on Iran - was just the latest move in a long and blood-soaked tradition, as chronicled in journalist Ronen Bergman’s boastful treatise Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel’s Targeted Assassinations (2018). Khamenei was a head of a state, and the spiritual leader of millions of Shia Muslims.