Is It Wrong To Celebrate The Death Of Your Oppressor?

Iranians, You Had Every Right

On 28th February 2026, Iranian women witnessed what many believed was a long-awaited reward for their resilience. After years of defiance against a regime that demanded their silence, for the first time, it seemed to be nearing an end. In the city of Dehloran, amid cheers, crowds gathered to pull down a statue affiliated with the regime; Karaj took to the streets to dance; in Izeh, celebrations transpired brazenly in public squares. The reason: Ayatollah Ali Khamenei–ruler of the Islamic Republic, for over three decades–had been killed in a series of coordinated US-Israeli airstrikes targeting senior Iranian leadership. For many, his demise felt like the first taste of freedom, which for so long had resembled a reticent concept over a lived reality.

But like any other political state of affairs, some of the population was eager to anoint Khamanei as a martyr. For them, his death symbolised nothing short of a curse bestowed upon the fate of the “true” Iranian people. However, truth be told, it is instinctive to be unsure of what the future of Iran holds. On the face of it, the airstrike signalled a dangerous escalation, one that only deepened the uncertainty for a country already perched on the edge of fragility. Overnight, Iran represented a country already strained by internal unrest, mounting international pressure, and an absent leader. If anything, this is a valid reason to not celebrate his assassination, and even condemn it. But for those whose very existence had been questioned and rigorously constrained by what Khamanei endorsed, did they not have a right to celebrate his demise? Somehow, even after witnessing acute callousness in geopolitics over the last decade, the world still craves comprehensibility. 

Even the most politically literate social media commentators gave rise to a black and white stance. Some have reduced the issue to the point of denying Iranians the right to commemorate, implying that their celebration equated to validating foreign intervention. The question remains: can people oppressed by a regime be denied the right to celebrate its fall? 

For Iranians, Khamanei’s rule was synonymous with police brutality exercised through intimidation and bloodshed. Every citizen was under the veil of surveillance, under the constant threat that any form of dissent would be met with imprisonment or a fate far worse, especially if it came from ethnic and religious minorities, political opponents, members of the LGBTQ+, and activists. Considerably, the repression that women endured was far more entrenched, systemic, and something that could not be concealed behind political rhetoric or explained away as episodic crackdowns. 

This transcended further when Mahsa Amini, a 22 year-old Kurdish woman, died under suspicious circumstances, after being detained for not wearing a headscarf in public space by Iran’s morality police. Her funeral in the city of Saqqezz ended up marking the beginning of the Women, Life, Freedom movement, arguably one of the most significant waves of resistance the Islamic Republic had faced in decades. The government retaliated. Widespread arrests, sexual violence, and torture tactics in detention facilities, unmistakably spelled out the message: autonomy would not be negotiated.

The uproar that started back in 2022 over basic rights did not dissipate. Rather, it settled beneath the substructure of Iranian society and reappeared again during recent protests in Iran. In late December 2025, millions voiced the need to fundamentally uproot the Islamic regime. And without hesitation, Iranian security forces–primarily Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and Basij militia–opened fire on protestors, killing thousands. In fact, even the magnitude of the turmoil was cascaded in unpredictability as Official Iranian sources reported a death toll of 3,100, but the Independent Organisations and monitors estimated the number to be closer to 30,000. Taken together, the aftermath of such devastation makes the celebration after their leader’s death a bit less perplexing. 

Factually, with the death of Khamanei, Iran lost its leader. Yet, for many Iranians it was the incremental step the country needed to regain its hold on freedom; its rights. While the fate of Iran’s ambit is being dissected and treated as merely a topic of discussion across the globe, the precariousness still hangs over Iranians. To rejoice is not to express acceptance of those who carried out the strike, but mere recognition of those who suffocated under his rule. It is a stand with the people who persevered, refused to bend and stay silent. 

The world demands dignity for the dead, but it should never come before the dignity denied to the living.

Because It Was Women

On the surface, the unforeseen death of political leaders is hardly unprecedented in history. Still, the reaction remains conditional. Even in 2026, the insistence to mourn someone who embodied a threat to your freedom is headlined for scrutiny. The only difference here is that the repression is gendered. Perhaps this reaction exists because the people who were systematically tyrannised, and who finally claimed redemption, just happened to be women. For once, women were not merely just victims, but agents of their own liberation.

For instance, after Adolf Hitler’s reported suicide, the world responded with disorientation–some with grief, some with relief. Alongside the official-protocol condolences, ritualised mourning of the State, and lamentations of the staunch Nazi loyalists, there lingered an unspoken recognition that the spectre of dictatorship had finally been broken. For Jews, the victims of Hitler’s well-orchestrated crime, the relief was accompanied with imminent sadness; while the perpetrator of the Holocaust was dead, their families would never come back. Understandably, the celebration of his death was met with sympathetic understanding and quiet approval. Even when pockets of unwavering loyalty to Hitler persisted, the entire world was able to process it as “it could have been us”. There was no compulsion to morally police the victims’ right to feel relief or even joy, possibly as his massacre was not directed solely towards women.

If the comparison between today and events that unfolded almost a century ago seems less palpable, a contemporary example would offer a clearer distinction: the reaction to the death of Margaret Thatcher. When the first female Prime Minister of the United Kingdom died in 2013, a woman who stood for uncompromised conservatism and widening class divide, the nation became pitilessly polarised. While the state officials commended her with ceremonial tributes, the common man of Britain remembered her for what her leadership represented: weakened local industries, mass unemployment, and dismantled labour laws. Even her assertive militarism, most notably Britain’s peripheral involvement in the Falklands War, poised her as a leader willing to pursue confrontation at considerable human cost. 

Naturally, her death drew thousands in London, Glasgow, and Liverpool with chants and the now-infamous refrain of “Ding Dong! The witch is dead”. Stephen Williams, a Liberal Democrat member of Parliament from Bristol, said it was “entirely distasteful” for anyone to celebrate “the death of another human being, whatever their politics’’. And still, the celebration was rarely framed as an unforgivable breach of moral conduct. Rather, it was interpreted as the expression of communities who had lived through the consequences of her rule.

Here is the simple certitude. Oppression does not become benign just because the oppressor is dead. It was oppression. It will always be remembered as oppression. 

Nevertheless, the indignation that Iranian’s face for celebration transmits a layer that goes beyond moral policing, a bit more seeped in the very inequality that the regime imposed and meticulously monitored. They were women. Half of the population have been invariably obligated to make peace with violence as default. Every crime against them to be dealt with in private, and if it isn’t, it gets framed as a question of ‘honour’. Whereas, for men, their suffering could be acknowledged. The past, too, conveyed that when oppression touched entire populations–men and women alike, as with Hitler and Thatcher—consolation was met with empathy. On the contrary, when it is just women, their exultation is read as transgressive, even threatening, casually revealing that gender determines who may grieve and rejoice in public. With everyone watching.

When The Grievances Can Be Understood

However, no matter the context, death does impose an unwritten law. Criticising the deceased itself becomes unruly. Before Khamanei, this law was tested again not even a year ago when Charlie Kirk, a radical-conservative commentator, was shot dead while speaking at the Utah Valley University in September 2025. In the American political dimension, he used his platform as the co-founder of Turning Point USA to campaign for an aggressively traditionalist vision of society. The comparison may appear uneasy, even indecent: placing the legacy of a leader who governed through the machinery of an Islamic regime beside that of an activist who spoke within the liberties of a free America.

Conversely, the comparison holds in one key respect. Both men–in different contexts– drew legitimacy from their religious beliefs to justify the social order they envisioned. Khamanei grounded his authority in a conservative interpretation of Shari’a Law, showcasing his governance ingrained in the preservation of religious rectitude and social virtue. Legally categorising women as second-class citizens, ‘mathematically’ deeming them as 50% less worthy than their counterparts; constitutional provisions permitting child marriage under Article 1041; diminishing accountability for alleged “honour” killing under Article 301, everything was reasoned with the religious teachings of his faith. Meanwhile Kirk relied on his Christian beliefs to advocate for traditional gender roles, anti-abortion policies, and anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric. Yet, he operated in a setting where what he endorsed was up for a debate. It had the space to be resisted. 

This is where the imperativeness of this distinction can be agreed upon. Unlike Khamanei, Kirk did not wield state-sanctioned power to force compliance, nor could he dictate the personal freedom of millions. Whatever his existence conferred, it remained subjected to democratic checks and opposition. And so, when Kirk died, he could be humanised as a husband and a father, even if his ideologies were accursed. Moreover, the West is already shifting toward conservatism by promoting exclusionary nationalism and traditional gender roles, positions that Kirk actively stood for. His voice amplified existing currents rather than creating them, and his death, while tragic, raised questions of free speech and public outrage–tensions that Iranians have never had the opportunity to navigate.

After Kirk’s death, people could wrestle with the grey area of outrage, because ideas can only influence society, but only power can imprison it–something that was not grasped within his grip.

For Iranian women, there is no grey, their celebration was purely survival made public. Enduring a regime that did not let them breathe–from their bodies being treated as heavily policed warzones, to their choices being policed on a daily basis–their reaction is undeniably justifiable. Those who faulted his death’s celebration spoke from positions that never endured the barbarity of his rule themselves, never had to fight for the utmost basic freedoms, and never lived under laws that criminalised autonomy. Their celebration is not cruelty, but the release of people who survived his rule.