The Left Weeps for Ayatollah Khamenei 

“With his square moustache and penetrating blue eyes, the svelte Adolf Hitler boasted a trimmer physique than his rotund second in command, Hermann Göring. Hitler, who died Monday by his own hand at age 56, loved to paint watercolors before entering public affairs in 1919.

“Even after reaching the pinnacle of German politics, Hitler often appeared at the opera, sporting white tie, tails, and a top hat. Der Führer, as his constituents called him, was one of the Fatherland’s most enthusiastic fans of Richard Wagner. Hitler often strolled through the Reich Chancellery humming haunting melodies from Wagner’s epic Götterdämmerung.

“The Nazi official’s controversial affinity for moving troops across international borders contrasted sharply with the easygoing lifestyle of the man whom his heartbroken followers mourn today: an introspective vegetarian who adored animals, not least his beloved German Shepherd, Blondi.”

Imagine that The Washington Post published such a glowing obituary of Nazi tyrant Adolf Hitler on April 30, 1945. Well, you needn’t, because it wouldn’t.

(In this connection, I just discovered some brilliant prose at UnHerd.com: “Jimmy Carr was asked recently to say something nice about Hitler. Carr replied, ‘Hitler doesn’t get enough credit for being the man who killed Hitler.’”)

Flash forward to Feb. 28, 2026. The Post’s obit of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei was almost as light a whitewash as the fictional text above. Here is how the Post’s William Branigan remembered the 86-year-old Islamofascist despot, who was blown to smithereens that morning, just as the joint U.S.–Israeli Operation Epic Fury began:

“With his bushy white beard and easy smile, Ayatollah Khamenei cut a more avuncular figure in public than his perpetually scowling but much more revered mentor [Ayatollah Khomeini], and he was known to be fond of Persian poetry and classic Western novels, especially Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables,” Branigan gushed. “Some Iranians who knew Ayatollah Khamenei before he became supreme leader described him as a ‘closet moderate.’”

The Post’s disgracefully generous farewell for this mass murderer is just the most prominent example of how the Left weeps for a man who — until he vanished beneath cascading debris — spent five decades as Earth’s most powerful anti-Semitic, misogynistic, homophobic terrorist.

Here’s how others on the Left expressed sympathy for the Devil:

• “Manassas Mosque extends its condolencesand glad tidings on the martyrdom of His Eminence Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei,” an Islamic center in Virginia announced March 1.

• “I offer my condolences to each and every one of you,” Imam Usama Abdulghani told his congregants that day at Dearborn, Michigan’s Hadi Institute. “I also offer my congratulations on this ultimate honor that he [Khamenei] received after 86 years of Jihad in the way of Allah.”

• A Hadi Institute speaker named Hassan Salamey said, “We’re gathered here today to commemorate the martyrdom of the great leader of our time, Sayyid Ali Hussein Khamenei.” Salamey continued: “And just like Palestine, we live on stolen land … The Statue of Liberty is actually Lucifer, the demonic bearer holding a torch of light.”

• “Dear Iran,” American soprano Manna K. Jones wrote via the Threads social-media platform. “I’m sorry. I’m so so sorry … Signed, A Black American Woman.” Jones sang Mozart’s Requiem at Carnegie Hall in 2024. Hitler would have been startled to learn that Jones portrayed Brünhilde in Götterdämmerung.

• The Guardian in London noted that under the Supreme Leader last month, “the country’s people took to the streets against the Islamic Republic. An estimated 30,000 or more protesters were killed — the largest death toll in modern Iranian history.”

More warmly, however, The Guardian purred: “Khamenei the supreme leader came to resemble Big Brother, in that his visage was seen everywhere — complete with wide-rimmed glasses, white beard, and the black turban that indicates a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad.” The pro-Labour newspaper indicated that “Khamenei was an avid reader of Western literature — including Uncle Tom’s Cabin, The Grapes of Wrath, and even the writings of Leo Tolstoy.”

This was too much for Ted Cruz.

“Iran, over 47 years, has been the No. 1 state funder of terrorism in the world,” the GOP senator from Texas told Fox News anchor Jesse Watters on Tuesday evening. “Over 90 percent of Hamas’ budget comes from Iran.”

In fact, the Gaza-based death cult confirmed Khamenei’s generosity: “He provided all forms of political, diplomatic and military support to our people, our cause, and our resistance,” the Palestinian Jew killers declared in a communiqué.

“Over 90 percent of Hezbollah’s and the Houthis’ budget comes from Iran,” Cruz continued. “The ayatollah was responsible for murdering nearly 1,000 Americans and also for hiring hit men to try to murder President Trump.”

Thus, Cruz added, “It is amazing to see Democrats line up to effectively defend the ayatollah.”

Amazing, indeed.

• The soft-on-Tehran crowd was back at it on Thursday. That afternoon, the U.S. House voted 372-53 for H. Res. 1099. Congressman Brian Mast’s (R–Florida) measure stated that “Iran remains the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism” and added: “Iranian-backed proxy militias are responsible for the deaths of at least 603 U.S. service members in Iraq — roughly one in every six American combat fatalities.”

Republicans unanimously concurred. So did 157 Democrats. However, 53 Democrats disagreed. The House Khamenei Caucus includes Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, and other hard-Left “Squad” members, Texas’s cane-waving Al Green, and even the allegedly moderate Ro Khanna of Silicon Valley, California. (RELATED: Americans Are Skeptical of the Iran Strikes. That’s a Good Thing.)

Returning to Khamenei himself, since 1981 (as Iran’s president) and 1989 (as its Supreme Leader), he labored tirelessly to slaughter as many Jews as possible.

“In 1994, a bomb-laden van was driven into the AMIA Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, killing 85 people and injuring over 300 — the deadliest terrorist attack in Argentine history and the worst attack [until that date] against Jews since the Holocaust,” Maya Sulkin recalled March 1 in The Free Press. “An Argentine court ruled that Iran and Hezbollah were behind the attack, and prosecutors argued that Khamenei himself gave the order to carry it out.”

Sulkin added: “Of Hamas’s October 7 attacks against southern Israel, Khamenei said, ‘We kiss the foreheads and arms of the young, wise, and intelligent Palestinian planners.’” That atrocity killed 1,189 men, women, and children (including 46 Americans) in the worst anti-Jewish carnage since the Final Solution. Sulkin also estimates that Iran orchestrated 180 attacks across the Middle East since October 7, 2023.

Khamenei was no feminist, either.

The Washington Post noted that Khamenei “upset his hosts during a visit to Zimbabwe when he refused to attend a state banquet in his honor because women were at the head table, and wine was being served.”

This was the mildest of the late Supreme Leader’s acts of misogyny.

Iran is No. 185 out of 189 nations in the Council on Foreign Relations’ Women’s Workplace Equality Index, which ranks “formal legal obstacles to women’s economic participation around the world.” Only Sudan, Qatar, Syria, and (dead last) Yemen score worse. For comparison, the top five are Australia (No. 1), Canada, New Zealand, Spain, and Mexico. America is No. 20.

The CFR notes that in Iran:

• “Married women are required by law to obey their husbands.”
• “Women’s testimony does not carry the same evidentiary weight in court as men’s.”
• “Daughters do not have the same rights as sons to inherit assets from their parents.”
• “Domestic violence is not legally prohibited.”
• “There is no law explicitly criminalizing marital rape.”

Since the Islamic Revolution of 1979, the ayatollahs — including Khamenei — have required women to wear hijabs or head coverings. Enforcement has varied at different times and places, but it can be brutal. In 2022, the ayatollahs sentenced a woman named Saba Kord Afshari to 15 years behind bars for “spreading corruption and prostitution by uncovering the hijab and walking without it.”

Afshari got off lightly.

“In September 2022, a 22-year-old woman named Mahsa Amini was arrested by Iran’s ‘morality police’ for wearing her hijab improperly,” The Free Press’s Maya Sulkin detailed. “Eyewitnesses reported she was severely beaten in custody; leaked medical scans showed serious injuries to her skull consistent with a cerebral hemorrhage. She died three days later. The government said she had a heart attack.” (RELATED: The Women Who Would Not Kneel)

The “Woman, Life, Freedom” protest movement swiftly erupted across Iran. Khamenei & Co. were not amused.

“A police crackdown has followed, with nearly 20,000 people arrested and 500 killed, according to the Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA),” the BBC reported.

And then things got hideous.

“Iranian activists also claim that many hundreds and possibly over a thousand protesters have been deliberately shot in their eyes,” the BBC added. “An estimated 500 protesters with eye injuries sought treatment at hospitals in Tehran during the autumn of 2022, while many others may have deliberately avoided visiting such hospitals for fear of arrest.”

Meanwhile, Bill Maher hinted at yet another flavor of Khamenei’s wickedness.

“Gay Americans are free to marry, and 49 percent of them own property,” the HBO host observed last May 9. “Yes, in America, gays buy buildings. And in other places, they get thrown off of them.”

Yes, other places like … Iran.

As authors Bill O’Reilly and Josh Hammer specified about the Islamic Republic in Confronting Evil (St. Martin’s Press, 2025): “Homosexuals are subjected to ‘execution by falling from great heights’ — they are thrown from rooftops.”

“In Iran, same-sex sexual acts are punishable by death,” attests Article 19, a British human rights organization. Beyond state-sponsored anti-gay killings, Khamenei’s government shrugged when families rubbed out their own homosexual relatives.

Article 19 cited “the case of 20-year-old Alireza Fazeli Monfared, who was beheaded by his half-brother and cousins,” when they discovered that he was gay. On May 4, 2021, Monfared’s mother learned that her son’s kin “finished him off” and tossed his body into a palm grove in the city of Ahvaz.

“In the case of Alireza Monfared, the perpetrators were never arrested,” Article 19 reports. Such outrages “demonstrate legally instituted impunity for such crimes and highlight the moral failings of Iran’s judicial system.”

Also, Khamenei and his regime relentlessly chanted three diabolical words that should have cemented even the U.S. Left’s enmity, but never did: “Death to America.”

The U.S. Secretary of State crystallized this matter on Tuesday. “Let me explain to you guys this, in simple English, OK?” Marco Rubio told journalists on Capitol Hill: “Iran is run by lunatics, religious-fanatic lunatics.” And, until Feb. 28, Iran’s lunatic-religious-fanatic-in-chief was the man in whose memory the Left has wheeled out the Kleenex: Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Senator John Kennedy (R-Louisiana) counted the ayatollah among Iran’s leading “religious zealots, who are 10 exits past normal.” Kennedy told Fox News’ Sean Hannity Tuesday night that [Khamenei] “died with the blood of millions under his fingernails. May he rest in pieces.”

READ MORE from Deroy Murdock:

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​Deroy Murdock is a Manhattan-based Fox News Contributor.