The killing of Khamenei: Missiles, martyrdom and the myth of liberation

The confirmed killing of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in a joint US-Israeli strike is not merely a dramatic escalation. It is a doctrinal event – the normalisation of decapitation as strategy and the rebranding of regime destabilisation as “liberation” once more.

For Washington and Tel Aviv, the message is familiar: deterrence through dominance, security through pre-emption, order through the targeted removal of a political and religious figurehead. For much of the region, the message is darker: sovereignty is conditional, the rules of international law are applied selectively and the costs of escalation are exported to those who cannot refuse the battlefield.

Geography is not neutral, it is power

One of the least-examined features of modern conflict is the geometry of force. The US can strike Iran from oceans away, supported by logistics, intelligence and a lattice of partnerships across the region. Israel can strike with proximity and deep operational focus. Iran, by contrast, is structurally constrained: its adversary’s homeland is far, its routes are policed and the political conditions required to replicate an equivalent forward posture rarely exist.

This asymmetry is often moralised as virtue – the “responsible” projection of power by a “rules-based” coalition. Yet, in practice it functions as hierarchy: some states can internationalise violence without consequence; others are punished for attempting reciprocity.

When the geography of power is this uneven, the rhetoric of “self-defence” begins to resemble structural privilege.

The language of liberation is never neutral

US political leaders have long framed interventions as emancipatory: to help people “live freely”, to remove “tyranny”, to restore “normal life”. In the wake of Khamenei’s killing, that vocabulary has resurfaced with familiar confidence.

But freedom, in this discourse, is rarely defined beyond alignment with Western political structures. It becomes a synonym for strategic compliance.

The paradox is stark. A political movement that chants “Make America Great Again” has repeatedly equated greatness with military latitude. During Donald Trump’s presidency US forces conducted strikes across multiple theatres while presenting themselves as reluctant guardians of peace. The 2017 missile strikes on Syria and the 2020 drone assassination of General Qassem Soleimani were defended as stabilising acts. Yet each intervention expanded volatility and deepened mistrust.

When peace is promised while theatres of conflict multiply, rhetoric becomes performance.

The ayatollah and the idea of resistance

To many within Iran and across parts of the Muslim world, Khamenei was not merely a head of state but a custodian of an ideological and religious project. He positioned Iran as a consistent and unapologetic advocate for Palestinian self-determination and resistance to Israeli occupation. He refused diplomatic normalisation with Israel and framed Iranian foreign policy as a moral counterweight to Western hegemony.

One may debate his domestic governance. One may critique the internal constraints of the system he led. But ideological consistency defined his tenure.

For many mourners, his death is not perceived as a strategic loss but as martyrdom – a sacrifice within a broader narrative of resistance. Whether or not one adopts that framing, its political force cannot be dismissed. Legitimacy is not measured solely by external approval; it is also shaped by symbolic resonance among a people who interpret sovereignty as spiritual as well as territorial.

Images of mass mourning complicate the language of “liberation”. If freedom is delivered through missiles, its authenticity is inevitably contested.

The quiet beneath the shock

If the strike is the headline, the regional response is the subtext. Many Muslim-majority governments have responded cautiously, constrained by economic interdependence, security arrangements or domestic fragility. Collective rhetoric has not translated into collective deterrence.

The fragmentation of the Islamic world has rendered solidarity more aspirational than structural. In moments of rupture, silence speaks.

Law as script

The legal vocabulary surrounding targeted killing – anticipatory self-defence, imminent threat, strategic necessity – is now routine. But when such arguments are deployed selectively, international law begins to resemble theatre.

If decapitation becomes normalised when executed by powerful states, it becomes harder to condemn when attempted by weaker ones. A “rules-based order” that appears elastic for some and rigid for others risks eroding its own authority.

Law cannot endure as performance.

The question that remains

The question is not whether Khamenei was a saint or a villain. He was a figure of conviction – revered by many, opposed by others – whose leadership embodied resistance to Western dominance and unwavering support for Palestinian liberation.

The deeper question is not merely what happens next in Tehran, but what kind of international order is being normalised. When sovereignty can be overridden from the sky, when geography determines who may retaliate and who must absorb, and when allied territory becomes a permanent launchpad, the language of law begins to thin.

The strike may be defended as a necessity. It may be packaged as protection. It may be celebrated as the removal of an obstacle to freedom. But when freedom arrives escorted by missiles, it is no longer liberation – it is instruction.

A global order that speaks endlessly of stability yet repeatedly chooses assassination as arbitration cannot claim moral neutrality. A “rules-based” system applied selectively is not a framework; it is a liturgy – invoked in principle, suspended in practice.

Peace built on asymmetry does not stabilise.

It hardens.

And what hardens does not disappear.

It waits. DM

Aaliyah Dowlutt has an LLB (Hons) from the University of South Africa. A Young Afsa and ICCA member, she is part of a new generation of African legal thinkers reshaping conversations around arbitration, legitimacy and continental identity. Her work examines questions of power and the evolving architecture of the global legal order.