Khamenei’s Killing: What Iranian Women Feel About Regime Change 

America and Israel’s war on Iran resulted in the killing of the supreme leader of Iran Ayatollah Khamenei along with several other prominent political and army leaders. Khamenei’s death sparked moments of mourning as well as celebration for many women. Thousands of women took to the streets of Tehran on March 1 for Khamenei's funeral expressing their grief. They were seen thumping their chest and crying,  while carrying his photographs in hand.

However, several other women celebrated his death as a moment of freedom from Khamenei' s oppressive regime especially for women. 

What lies beneath this pendulum of celebration and grief is an extremely complex reality and the lived experience of Iranian women. For example, not every Iranian woman who expressed her grief after Khamenei's death, was necessarily a supporter of his regime, for a few the grief emerged from Iran’s sovereignty being killed along with Khamenei. And not every woman who celebrated his death subscribes to the idea of Iranian women’s ‘liberation’ by the USA and Israel. And this is just one facet of the narrative; there are many more nuanced expressions and narratives on social media.

Here is a compilation of few such voices, none of these claims to be the full picture or representation of all Iranian women. 

The Democratic Organisation of Iranian Women(DOIW) issued a statement on March 1, 2026 on the current war situation in Iran. DOIW is Iran’s largest progressive women’s organisation, founded in 1943, by a group of women activists from the ranks of the Tudeh Party of Iran. In its statement DOIW has condemned military attacks by the USA and Israel on its homeland.

The statement says: “This onslaught will result in the country’s infrastructure and resources as well as the brutal killing of the civilian population. Initial reports of the outcome of this savage attack on Iranian soil, targeted a girls’ school in the city of Minab in the Hormozgan Province, and according to the Governor of Minab, more than 90 innocent school children were killed, many more children were injured, and the school has been left in ruins. National and democratic forces of our country have declared over and again that the way to free our homeland from the current dictatorship is through a popular struggle alongside progressive forces on our soil, and they strongly condemn any form of outside intervention by foreign armies, as the violation of Iran’s sovereignty and an encroachment on the soil of our homeland.” 

DOIW strongly opposed the idea of liberation or freedom of Iranian women. The statement further says, “However, US imperialism speaks of regime change in Iran, and has tried to justify its savage violation of our country’s sovereignty alongside the racist regime of Israel that has the blood of thousands of innocent children of Gaza and whose Prime Minister is wanted by the international court of justice, by pretending that it is gifting freedom to our people. Of course, the world public opinion has witnessed examples of bearing such gifts of freedom and democracy to the people of Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.”

Ariana Jasmine is an Iranian-American Leftist news creator who has expressed her views on the killing of Khamenei. She says, "two things are true at once, Khamenei was an oppressive dictator who subjugated the Iranian people (especially women) and The USA and Israel are not and will never be the liberators of any nation.”

Jasmine also highlighted the autonomy of Iranian people saying, “Iranian people deserve the autonomy to overthrow their own regime on their own terms. Now their own future will be shaped by the same global empire responsible for the massacre of millions of civilians in the region over the past couple of decades.”

Ciara Moez an Iranian American woman based in New York has written an essay on Substack, She says, 

“Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of Iran, was an oppressive dictator who, over decades of rule, carried out systematic crimes against the Iranian people. Executions, mass imprisonment, persecution of minorities, and massacres all happened under his authority. This cannot be denied. Because of this, many Iranians, inside Iran and across the diaspora, are celebrating his death. For many, it feels like a collective exhale, a release, and finally, a form of justice.”

She further writes, “I always wanted Khamenei, along with other Iranian government leaders, to be brought to trial for crimes against humanity, as we’ve seen in other historical contexts. I wanted justice and accountability through mechanisms of international law rather than external forces. But I also know how naive that sounds in a world where so many perpetrators of mass violence will never face a courtroom.”

“As an Iranian American who grew up hearing and reading stories of the Islamic Republic’s crimes, I could never glorify Khamenei. In life or in death, I will not honour them, and I will not grieve them.

And that brings me to another truth about two other criminals I will never glorify: Trump and Netanyahu. Whether we want to admit it or not, they have just violated international law by starting a war and assassinating the head of state of their shared enemy. This cannot be brushed aside. We have watched a culture of impunity produce more impunity year after year, and now we will continue to live with its consequences. What happened sets a dangerous precedent. It normalizes the assassination of heads of state, erodes international law, and accelerates the collapse of global accountability.”

Lilli Michelle is a New York-based Iranian comedian. Her family members have been imprisoned, tortured in the past in Iran. From ripping of fingernails, to assault with women in custody and forced confessions Michelle’s family has endured it all. Her personal account explains why she doesn’t mourn the death of Khamenei and what she thinks about regime change. 

“When I heard the news, I cried. Not delicately. Not politically. It felt ancestral. As if generations of Iranians were crying at once. For the students who were shot in the streets, for the women arrested for showing their hair. For the prisoners tortured behind walls the world pretended not to see. I am not naive about what comes next. I understand instability, I understand power vacuums, I understand authoritarian systems do not disappear cleanly, I understand war, I understand foreign intervention. I understand the uncertainty is not romantic. But for moment, it felt like the man who presided over decades of death, imprisonment, rape, torture and systemic oppression was finally gone. I am anti-war with Iran but being anti-war does not require mourning a dictator. ”