In the opening moments of Operations Epic Fury and Roaring Lion, the Israel Defense Forces (“IDF”) brought justice to the countless victims of the Islamic Republic of Iran scattered across the region and the wider world. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed in an IDF strike on his presidential compound in Tehran. As news of his death emerged, footage emerged from across the nation as Iranians emerged from their homes to celebrate his demise and the prospect of a future free of the Islamic Republic’s oppression.
After Khamenei’s death: Fireworks of celebration in Iran pic.twitter.com/lgPApS4hIP
— Amit Segal (@AmitSegal) February 28, 2026
But across the world, the Wall Street Journal was noticeably less optimistic. In the Journal’s obituary for the Ayatollah (“Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei Dies,” Mar. 1, 2026, by Sune Engel Rasmussen), the carnage wrought by Khamenei domestically and abroad was thoroughly downplayed. While devoting substantial space to depicting Khamenei as a figure of “resistance to the U.S. and Israel,” Rasmussen largely omitted from the record his regime’s role in fueling conflicts across the region, engaging in and supporting acts of terror across the world, and perhaps most egregiously, the regime’s repression of Iranian women.
Begin with the women. Khamenei ruled over a nation that instituted what many refer to as “gender apartheid” – the systematic denial of rights and freedom for women in nearly every aspect of their lives, from marriage to inheritance, from employment to political office, from travel to even the very clothes women can wear. Should a woman choose not to wear an Islamic hijab, the regime’s oppressive laws would have her punished with time in prison and “up to 74 lashes.” Over time, Iran became synonymous with the repression of women. When Iranian women rose up to demand their rights during the protests in 2022, following the detention and murder of the young Iranian woman Jina Mahsa Amini by Iran’s morality police, Khamenei responded by slaughtering hundreds of protesters.
So how did the Wall Street Journal address this major aspect of Khamenei’s life and rule? By applauding his regime for boosting female literacy rates. That’s the only reference to Iranian women made in the 2,600+ word obituary. In other words, the Journal did not simply ignore Khamenei’s repression of women; it depicted him as a savior for women.
Similarly downplayed was the web of terrorism and violence Khamenei’s regime wove across not only the Middle East, but the entire world. The narrative: that the Ayatollah simply sought to protect Iran and his Islamic regime.
The Wall Street Journal’s obituary opens by depicting him as simply “resisting” the U.S. and Israel. Referring to Iran’s vast proxy network, Rasmussen reinforces his narrative of a defensive posture, referring to them simply as a “network of armed groups” that “pinn[ed] down foes” and “provid[ed] Tehran with strategic space to prevent direct enemy attacks.” Obscenely, the Wall Street Journal cannot even bring itself to depict the October 7, 2023 massacre – carried out by Khamenei’s proxy Hamas – as the act of war. Instead, the war launched that day by Hamas is described as “the war Israel unleashed in response…”
In reality, Khamenei’s regime was never internally focused. Indeed, his regime was ideologically committed to exporting the “Islamic revolution.” In the words of his mentor and predecessor, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomenei, “We shall export our revolution to the whole world. Until the cry ‘there is no god but God’ resounds over the whole world, there will be struggle.” According to one study by the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, this sentiment could be found in the same proportion of speeches by Khamenei as in Khomenei’s.
Throughout Khamenei’s rule, this was accomplished through the establishment, funding, arming, and provision of other forms of support for extremist terrorist organizations like Hezbollah, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Houthis, Kataib Hezbollah, and more. Khamenei similarly propped up the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad. Combined, these entities are responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands, having employed brutal measures targeting civilians, from barrel bombs to indiscriminate rockets, from suicide bombs to the atrocities of October 7, 2023.
Yet the paper absurdly depicts this export of a violent ideology in this way: “Khamenei sought to…usher in an Islamic revival that would sweep the region, ‘like the scent of spring flowers that is carried by the breeze.’” Surely Rasmussen never experienced the scent of the corpses left behind by Khamenei’s proxies in the killing fields of Syria, southern Israel, Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq, Burgas, Buenos Aires, and beyond.
While Rasmussen references several aspects of Khamenei’s blood-stained rule, the narrative rewrite of these major themes distorts reality and does a tremendous disservice to the memory of the millions of victims. Those who value the truth must not let the Wall Street Journal’s soft treatment of Khamenei become the first draft of the history of his vile rule.