Decapitated, but Martyred: Iran After Khamenei
Ayatollah Khamenei’s death shook Iran. For the survivors of his rule, it felt less like justice than a warning.
Ana Diamond is one of those survivors. A former political prisoner in Iran (2014-2018), writer, and co-founder of the Alliance Against State Hostage-Taking, an organisation advocating for individuals detained as instruments of state leverage. Her forthcoming memoir, Breaking Silence, will be published in spring 2027 by Canongate (UK) and Summit Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster (US & Canada), as well as in 12 other countries.
Diamond has spent much of her life living the consequences of the political system Khamenei built, both inside Iran and in exile. Her reaction to the news was not celebration, but frustration.
Martyrdom Instead of Justice
On 28 February, Iranian state media confirmed Khamenei’s death at the age of 86. The government declared forty days of mourning.
For Diamond, the problem was not simply that he died, but how.
“He was 86 years old, and in many ways, killing him in this way also handed him something he had invoked for decades: martyrdom at the hands of ‘external enemies.’”
At 86, his death handed him what he always claimed to resist: martyrdom by foreign hands.
The symbolism matters: Khamenei died during the holy month of Ramadan, a timing that may reinforce the religious narrative the regime cultivated for decades.
“I felt a certain regret that he will never have to answer for the immense human cost of the system he presided over; the policies and networks he helped shape—directly and indirectly—have contributed to conflict and suffering across the region, from Iraq and Syria to Lebanon, Palestine, and Yemen, all the way to Latin America, leaving millions dead, displaced, or impoverished.”
A courtroom, she believes, would have served history better.
“Many in the West are either unfamiliar with these crimes or simply indifferent to them, which is why a courtroom would have served history better; a public reckoning could have helped establish a record and reinforced the principle that even the most powerful leaders are not immune from accountability. Instead, this was an easy way out for him.”
A Divided Reaction
Reactions among Iranians have been mixed.
Some celebrated the death of a man widely seen as the architect of a brutal authoritarian system. Others mourned him as a symbol of Shi’a political identity and resistance.
“Having said that, we did see many Iranians—both inside and outside the country—who did celebrate his assassination. For many Iranians, Khamenei embodied an entrenched, brutal authoritarian order; for others, he functioned as a symbol of Shi’a political identity and resistance.”
That duality, Diamond suggests, helps explain both the durability and the contradictions of the Islamic Republic — a reality often overlooked when outside observers speculate about rapid regime change.
The System Behind the Leader
For nearly half a century the Islamic Republic has built a deeply entrenched political structure.
“The reality is that the Islamic Republic isn't just a government; it's a deeply institutionalised system woven into the economy, the security apparatus, and the social fabric. That's precisely why it has survived for close to five decades despite widespread internal opposition.”
At the centre of that system stands the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
“As long as the IRGC remains cohesive, funded, and ideologically committed, what looks like a crack is more likely a stress fractures the regime can absorb – and I want to be clear that the IRGC don't just defend the regime; they are the regime.”
If anything, the assassination of a symbolic leader may reinforce the narrative that the state is under attack from foreign enemies — precisely the narrative that has sustained the Islamic Republic for decades.
Why Regime Change Is Hard
A political transition in Iran today would be difficult, particularly with the IRGC in charge.
“Regime change in Iran is possible, but it will be a generational project, and we should be honest about it.”
The opposition has historically struggled to form durable political organisations, largely because the state has systematically dismantled emerging networks.
“Vague appeals to democracy rarely translate into organised political power, and Iranians have, sadly, been remarkably bad at building that organisation, not out of lack of will, but because the Islamic Republic has been devastatingly effective at identifying and dismantling every network, every coalition, every attempt at civil society before it can take root, which makes regime change, in its most idealistic, bloodless version, quite impossible.”
Iran’s ethnic diversity adds another layer of complexity.
“On the ethnic dimension, the diversity is real and consequential. The Arabs, the Kurds, the Baluch—these are demographics that have long sought greater autonomy and there is a legitimate fear of balkanisation.”
Both the Islamic Republic and the monarchy of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi have historically been successful in maintaining strong centralized authority.
“I think it's worth acknowledging that both the Pahlavi’s and the Islamic Republic, despite their many failures, were remarkably effective at centralising authority and maintaining territorial coherence. That tradition of centralised statecraft doesn't disappear overnight.”
Reza Pahlavi
In recent years, the son of the Iranian Shah – Reza Pahlavi – has been working to advocate for Iranians inside Iran although many Iranians, I speak to inside the UAE, perceive him to be illegitimate despite his important role in advocacy.
“As for Reza Pahlavi, he has become, for a significant segment of Iranians, a symbol of an alternative direction. He has been careful to frame his own role as transitional, as facilitating conditions under which Iranians themselves can choose their leaders,” said Diamond.
“I think he understands, at least publicly, that the Iran he left in 1979 no longer exists; whether that understanding runs deep enough to navigate what comes next is a different question.”
Abroad, the diaspora is dispersed making strong advocacy welcome, but the fundamentals remain the same.
“What exists abroad is a diaspora that is geographically dispersed, generationally divided, and shaped by profoundly different experiences of Iran, largely so painful that caused displacement and separation from their family, culture, even identity. Unity requires not just shared opposition but shared vision, and that is precisely what has proved elusive.”
Justice from Within
As with history, the most credible leaders will emerge from within Iran itself but the diaspora matters.
“When the time comes, it should be decided by Iranians themselves what that Iran is going to look like, by those within the country and from the diaspora alike,” said Diamond.
The transition is likely to be an uphill battle but fought through a series of actions marked by watershed moments – one being the death of Khamenei.
“Iran is not going to move overnight from theocratic, conservative, and dictatorial rule to a liberal secular democracy, and any transition that proceeds as though it might risk the kind of instability that has historically produced outcomes worse than what it replaced,” said Diamond.
War and the Prison System
For Diamond, one of the greatest dangers of the current conflict is that political prisoners inside Iran may disappear from international attention.
Drawing on her own experience inside Tehran’s Evin Prison, she warns that wartime chaos often provides cover for repression.
“I am glad you asked this question, and I want to answer it carefully, because one of the things I know from inside Evin is how deliberately the regime engineers the disappearance of prisoners from the world's consciousness, particularly during times of volatility and war.”
Political Repression at War
The government has done this before.
“The Islamic Republic has long known how to use war as cover to eliminate its opposition. It did so in 1988, when tens of thousands of political prisoners were executed during the Iran–Iraq war – while the country and the world – were looking elsewhere.”
Recent reports of prisoner transfers are deeply concerning.
“In recent days petty criminals have been released on bail while political prisoners have been transferred from Evin to undisclosed locations, their families given no information about where they are being taken. In the best case, they are being moved to another facility.
At the worst, they may be abused, even executed, disappeared into secret detention centres, or held in government compounds where they can be used as human shields.”
She is particularly worried about the thousands arrested during recent protests.
“That is why I fear for the tens of thousands arrested during the January 2026 uprising—many of them children and women. When the world is focused on war, no one is watching the prisons – abandoned to their silence, men and women sealed in concrete cells with no one left to hear them, or worse, they themselves becoming targets of bombardment as sites are run by the IRGC.”
A Refugee, A Prisoner, and Advocate: Diamond’s Message
Diamond herself was imprisoned as a teenager.
“I became a refugee at five, a political prisoner at nineteen, and for as long as I can remember, I have been asking: how and why did we get here? Now, finally, the world is asking the same question.”
Diamond is now working on a family memoir tracing more than a century of Iranian history through the lives of women.
The book is a multi-generational story from the perspective of women, following a single family through the conjunctures that shaped a nation: its rises, its falls, its moments of extraordinary possibility and devastating betrayal.
But her thoughts remain with those still behind bars or under state surveillance. The most important lesson she learned in prison was, in a way, paradoxical. “In a place where I controlled almost nothing, I discovered a strange form of freedom in recognising what I could still control: my own mind, and my own calm.”
In solitary confinement, Diamond realised how to deal with the worst thoughts deemed possible. “You must decide, every single day, not to let them win. Prayer became my anchor. I trained myself to think in the future tense: that I would survive this, that there would be a life waiting on the other side, that I would still get to see my parents and my best friends,” she said.
But at the end, justice demands accountability — a truth that runs deeper than the fall of any single ruler, rooted in the aspirations of those who survive the regime, hold the system accountable, and shape the future of Iran from within.
Ana Diamond is a former political prisoner in Iran (2014-2018), writer, and co-founder of the Alliance Against State Hostage-Taking, an organisation advocating for individuals detained as instruments of state leverage. Her forthcoming memoir, Breaking Silence, will be published in spring 2027 by Canongate (UK) and Summit Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster (US & Canada), as well as in 12 other countries.
Diamond has spent much of her life living the consequences of the political system Khamenei built, both inside Iran and in exile. Her reaction to the news was not celebration, but frustration.