This beautifully crafted voxel animation serves as a poignant digital tribute to the late Iranian President, Ayatollah Ebrahim Raisi. Tracing his journey from his 2021 inauguration to his final, tragic flight in the Varzaqan mountains, the video honours his tireless devotion to the people—chronicling his domestic efforts in factory revitalisation, pandemic response, and flood relief, as well as his steadfast defiance against oppression on the global stage.

The tribute culminates in a deeply spiritual reflection on his martyrdom, beautifully illustrating his transition from earthly service to eternal peace, welcomed by the faithful in the presence of the holy shrines. A moving remembrance of a leader who lived and died in the service of his nation.

In the rich tapestry of Islamic jurisprudence, philosophy, and theological discourse, certain figures shine with a brilliance that outlasts centuries. Among these intellectual titans stands Hazrat Shaheed Rabe (the Fourth Martyr), a revered Shia scholar whose mastery of both religious and worldly sciences left an indelible mark on 19th-century India. Residing in Delhi during a period of vast socio-political transition, his life was defined by an unyielding pursuit of truth, a prolific library of written work, and a devotion that ultimately cost him his life.

Origins and Early Brilliance

Born as Mirza Muhammad, he later earned the nickname Kamil (The Perfect) and is universally remembered by his title, Shaheed Rabe. The son of Mirza Inayat Ahmed, a resident of Kashmir, Mirza Muhammad moved to Delhi where he would spend his life enriching the city's academic and spiritual landscape.

From his youth, Shaheed Rabe displayed an immense capacity for learning, mastering both the traditional and rational sciences. He studied medicine (Hikmat) under Haziq Hakeem Sharif Khan Dehlavi, one of the most celebrated royal physicians of the era. His mastery was so profound that his early professional life was deeply rooted in medical practice.

Simultaneously, he scaled the heights of religious academia under the tutelage of Maulana Syed Rahm Ali, a prominent scholar who also educated the brother of the Mughal Emperor, Muhammad Shah Badshah. Through this rigorous education, Shaheed Rabe achieved the exceptionally rare rank of Ijtihad—the authority to interpret Islamic law independently. Historical accounts, such as the Persian biographies by Allama Syed Ejaz Hussain, note that he was not a muqallid (blind follower) of anyone; rather, his jurisprudential acumen allowed him to derive legal rulings directly from core Islamic sources.

A Prolific Pen and Intellectual Warfare

Shaheed Rabe was not merely a passive academic; he was a dynamic writer and teacher. Scholars of his time, including the author of Najoom al-Samaa, described him as a linguistic master whose asceticism, piety, and research methods were exemplary. When teaching, he routinely wrote detailed, clarifying notes directly into the margins of textbooks to guide his students.
Throughout his lifetime, he authored an astonishing 68 books spanning a diverse array of subjects: jurisprudence (fiqh), theology (kalam), prophetic traditions (hadith), philosophy, and history. Much of his work focused on compiling selections from Ahl al-Sunnah (Sunni) texts that affirmed the spiritual virtues and merits of the Ahl al-Bayt (the Prophet Muhammad's family), seeking to bridge understandings through textual evidence.
His magnum opus, however, was Nizhah Isna Ashariya (Nuzhat Ithna Ashariyah). Spanning twelve massive volumes, this monumental text was written as a comprehensive, reasoned response to Tohfa-e-Asna Ashariya, a highly critical anti-Shia polemic written by the famous Sunni scholar Shah Abdul Aziz Dehlavi. Shaheed Rabe's defence of Twelver Shia doctrines was so thoroughly researched, logically structured, and intellectually unassailable that it gained immediate renown. In a striking testament to its quality, Shah Abdul Aziz himself allegedly requested Hakeem Sharif Khan to procure a copy of the volumes for his own personal study.

The Ultimate Sacrifice

The light of Shaheed Rabe's intellect drew immense admiration, but it also bred severe jealousy and animosity among those who opposed his teachings. According to historic accounts compiled by his disciple Mirza Ameer Ali, a local ruler named Nawab Abdul Rahman of Jhajjar (modern-day Haryana) harboured a deep, malicious hatred for the scholar.

Unable to defeat Shaheed Rabe in an intellectual debate, the Nawab devised a deceptive plot. Faking a severe physical illness, the Nawab petitioned the Mughal King to send Delhi's finest physician to treat him. Recognising Shaheed Rabe’s unparalleled medical expertise, the King ordered him to travel to Jhajjar.

Shaheed Rabe initially refused, sensing foul play. However, as royal pressure and insistence mounted, he was forced to undertake the journey. Upon leaving Delhi, he reportedly told his companions that he was likely saying goodbye to his life. His premonition proved true. Blinded by sectarian hatred and jealousy, the Nawab poisoned the scholar during the course of the medical visit.

Shaheed Rabe succumbed to the poison in the year 1225 AH (approximately 1810 CE), earning the coveted crown of martyrdom. The tragedy echoed deeply within the literary world; prominent poets and historians, such as Afzal Hussain Thabit Lakhnavi, penned mournful chronograms deriving the date of his passing from tragic phrases like "Haye afsos Faazil-e-Kamil" (Alas, the Perfect Scholar).

An Enduring Sanctuary: Dargah Panja Sharif

Today, the physical remains of Shaheed Rabe rest in Delhi at the historic Dargah Panja Sharif, located near Kashmiri Gate. The shrine derives its name from a sacred artefact bearing the impression of the Panja (the hand/fingers) attributed to Imam Ali Ibn Abi Talib.

Over the centuries, the Dargah has become a sanctuary for spiritual seekers and a resting place for other legendary figures, including the Quranic commentator Maulana Maqbool Ahmad and Maulana Aftab Hussain Zaidi. Despite structural halts and court suspensions over the decades, the shrine underwent major reconstructions starting in 1348 AH and again in 1411 AH.
To this day, the annual Majlis (commemorative gathering) continues to be held at his grave, ensuring that while the enemies of Shaheed Rabe succeeded in ending his physical life, they failed entirely to extinguish the brilliant flame of his intellect and devotion. In accordance with the Quranic verse inscribed upon his memory, he remains alive, sustained by his Lord, and immortalised in the pages of history.

For Mandana Salari, teaching was never just a profession; it was a profound act of love, an art form painted not with chalk, but with her very life. On February 28, 2026, when American-Israeli missiles struck the "Shajareh Tayyebeh" elementary school in the sun-warmed town of Minab, the world lost a radiant beacon of kindness. But in the smoke and rubble of that horrific day, Mandana offered humanity one last, breathtaking lesson in what it means to truly love.

At just 29 years old, Mandana was a mother twice over. She had a beautiful seven-year-old daughter, Liana, who attended the same school, and a one-and-a-half-year-old son, Youna, waiting for her at home. Yet, to the first-grade boys in her classroom, she was a "second mother." Coming from a comfortable background, she did not need the salary that teaching provided. She came to the school every day, driven by a pure, boundless passion for the children in her care.

To her students, her classroom was a world of magic and meaning. Rather than rote memorisation, she brought the Persian alphabet to life by baking fresh bread so the letters would taste sweet on their tongues. She would don glasses and cotton in her ears to play the role of a grandmother, weaving lessons of respect for elders into her curriculum. To instil a deep love for their homeland, she once wore her brother’s military uniform to teach them about protecting Iran, and she celebrated the nation’s rich tapestry by having the children wear traditional Kurdish, Lor, Baloch, and Persian clothing. To Mandana, the identity of Iran was rooted in diversity and compassion.

Tragically, this sanctuary of learning was shattered an hour before noon. When the missiles tore through the clear sky—destroying the courtyard, igniting the classrooms, and forever silencing the laughter of innocent children—Mandana was faced with the ultimate test. In those terrifying seconds between life and death, as the ceiling rained down fire and destruction, she did not flee. She did not scream.

Instead, she opened her arms.

When rescue workers pulled Mandana from the devastating wreckage at midnight, they found her frozen in a final act of supreme devotion. Her arms were locked tightly around the small shoulders of four of her students. She had gathered them into her chest, shielding them with her own body so that they would not face the terrifying darkness alone. Heartbreakingly, the body of her own beloved daughter, Liana, was found just two meters behind her. In the absence of the boys' mothers, Mandana stayed to be their mother at the very end, at the unfathomable cost of her own life and the life of her daughter.

In total, the unprovoked massacre at Minab claimed the lives of 73 young boys, 47 little girls, 26 dedicated teachers, alongside parents and staff. But the memory of Martyr Mandana Salari rises above the ashes of this unthinkable tragedy.

As Iran observes Teachers' Day, her name echoes not just in the halls of schools, but in the hearts of a grieving yet resilient nation. Mandana’s final lesson plan was not written on paper, but inscribed into the soul of history with her own blood. She is the epitome of the martyr: a woman who lived nobly, died nobly, and proved that even in the face of absolute terror, the embrace of a teacher can hold more power, grace, and enduring love than the weapons of those who seek to destroy it.

There is a particular kind of silence that hangs over a place where a building used to be. In the southern Iranian city of Minab, in Hormozgan province, that silence now belongs to the Shajareh Tayyebeh Elementary School — or rather, to the patch of ground where the school used to stand before a US Tomahawk missile cut it in half on the morning of 28 February 2026, and a second one returned to finish what the first had started.

By the time the dust settled, 155 people were dead. 120 of them were children.

The Trump administration has yet to acknowledge that it was American hands on the trigger. The Grayzone’s Wyatt Reed travelled to Minab anyway, walked the rubble, spoke to survivors, and filed the dispatch this article is built on. His video stands as one of the few pieces of Western journalism to actually go and look.

What happened that morning

The school sat in the Shahrak-e Al-Mahdi neighbourhood, on the edge of what had once been a base used by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy. The key word is had been. According to satellite imagery reviewed by Human Rights Watch, the building housing the school had been walled off from the rest of the compound by 2016 at the latest. It had its own street entrances. It had no military checkpoint. The base’s military security posts had been dismantled. By the mayor’s account, the compound had been shut for roughly fifteen years and the school was the only thing still operating on the site. It had a website. It had a children’s playground. It had children in it.

Saturday is a working day in Iran, and 28 February was a school day. At around 9.45am local time, the joint US–Israeli assault on Iran began. At roughly 10.45am — peak classroom hours — a missile struck the two-storey school building. The roof pancaked downward onto the children below, a destruction pattern that Amnesty International later identified as the unmistakable signature of a top-down precision strike rather than a stray weapon.

The school principal, according to testimony given to Middle East Eye by Red Crescent medics and a victim’s father, gathered the survivors of the first blast into a prayer room and began phoning parents to come and collect their children. Before most of the parents could arrive, a second missile arrived first. It hit the prayer room. According to Minab’s mayor and the Iranian Ministry of Education, the school was actually struck a third time. BBC Verify’s satellite analysis found multiple impacts on the site.

The military term for this is a “double tap.” The first strike kills the primary target. The second kills the rescuers, the medics, the parents — anyone who runs toward the screaming. It is one of the oldest signatures of deliberate cruelty in modern aerial warfare.

“We never target civilians”

The Pentagon’s response has followed the script that Western militaries have been reading from for the better part of a century. On 4 March, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told reporters the Department of Defense was “investigating,” while insisting that American forces never target civilians. Donald Trump, asked about mounting visual evidence that a US Tomahawk had struck the school, suggested that another country might have fired the missile and at one point publicly accused Iran itself of bombing the school.

The evidence does not cooperate with this story.

Tomahawk missiles are used exclusively by US forces in the current conflict. Photographs of weapon fragments recovered from the rubble were analysed by the New York Times and CNN and judged consistent with Tomahawk components. The Pentagon itself published video of US warships firing Tomahawks at Iran on the same day. By 11 March, the New York Times was reporting that an internal US military investigation had preliminarily determined that the United States was responsible — and that the strike had been carried out using outdated targeting data which still listed the long-civilianised school as part of an active military base.

Amnesty International was unequivocal: the strike was unlawful, those responsible must be held accountable, and the reliance on out-of-date intelligence to obliterate a building any open-source researcher could have identified as a school in five minutes constitutes a serious breach of the principle of precaution under international humanitarian law.

Human Rights Watch has called for the attack to be investigated as a potential war crime.

The My Lai comparison

The framing of the Grayzone video — that this is the worst US military massacre of civilians since My Lai — is not rhetorical excess. It is a measured comparison.

In March 1968, US soldiers murdered between 347 and 504 unarmed Vietnamese villagers in the hamlet of My Lai. The Army covered it up. Only the dogged work of Ronald Ridenhour and Seymour Hersh forced it into public view. Twenty-six soldiers were charged. Exactly one was convicted. Lieutenant William Calley Jr was given a life sentence which was almost immediately commuted; he served three and a half years of house arrest and died a free man.

Minab is the largest single mass killing of civilians by US forces in the decades since. And so far, the institutional response — denial, deflection, blaming the victim — is following the same arc.

What Minab has that My Lai did not is satellite imagery, missile fragments analysed by major newspapers, satellite-tracked impact patterns from BBC Verify, and an entire chorus of international human rights organisations naming the perpetrator within weeks rather than years. Six senior Democratic senators — Schatz, Shaheen, Reed, Warren and others — wrote to Hegseth demanding answers. 120 House Democrats followed. The Iranian foreign ministry called it a blatant war crime. UNESCO condemned it.

And yet the White House continues, as of this writing, to insist either that it didn’t happen or that someone else did it.

What Wyatt Reed found

What Reed’s reporting from Minab brings is the texture that satellite imagery cannot. The neighbourhood. The shape of the destruction at street level. The accounts of people who ran toward the school after the first explosion and were still running when the second missile arrived. The small painted flowers on the fragments of wall still standing — the school had been decorated, on the outside, with pink flowers and green leaves.

The Grayzone has done what most legacy outlets have not: gone to the place, walked it, and pressed record. In an information environment where the Pentagon’s denial is treated by much of the Western press as one valid “side” of a debate, that act of basic journalism — go and look — has become rare enough to be radical.

The accountability that probably won’t come

The honest assessment from analysts quoted across the coverage is bleak. Even if the Pentagon’s internal investigation eventually concludes what every external investigation has already concluded — that this was a US strike on a civilian school — the most likely outcome is administrative. Perhaps a single officer disciplined. Perhaps a quietly revised targeting protocol. No prosecutions. No reparations. No reckoning.

That is the pattern. My Lai produced one Calley. The drone wars produced almost no one. The pattern continues because it is allowed to continue.

What can be done — what the families of 120 dead children in Minab are owed at the absolute minimum — is that their names are not allowed to disappear. That the school is not allowed to be erased a second time, this time from memory. That when the official record is written, it includes the words the United States did this, and not the laundered passive voice of “a tragic incident occurred.”

The Shajareh Tayyebeh Elementary School existed. It was a school. The Pentagon hit it twice. 120 children are dead. Say it plainly, and keep saying it.

In the tapestry of a nation’s history, there are figures who do not merely occupy space in the chronicles of governance but who weave themselves into the very fabric of its identity. Dr Ali Larijani was one such figure—a man of profound intellect, quiet strength, and an enduring commitment to the path he chose to walk. With his passing, we reflect not on the titles he held but on the character of a man who lived a life of purpose, guided by faith and a deep-seated love for his homeland.

Dr Larijani was often described as a “man for all seasons,” a testament to his versatility and his ability to navigate the complexities of his era with grace. He possessed a rare blend of academic depth and practical wisdom, qualities that allowed him to serve as a bridge between tradition and the demands of a changing world. Those who knew him speak of a philosopher-statesman—someone who could engage in the highest levels of intellectual discourse while never losing sight of the humble duty to serve.

His journey was marked by a tireless work ethic. From his early days of service to his final moments, his life was a testament to the idea that true leadership is a form of sacrifice. He did not seek the spotlight for its own sake; rather, he stood in it because his conscience demanded that he contribute his talents to the collective good. Even as time moved forward and challenges shifted, his resolve remained a fixed point, a steady hand in a world often characterised by turbulence.

On this, the fortieth day since his departure, the echoes of his wisdom resonate more clearly than ever. The concept of “martyrdom” in its truest sense is not merely about the end of a life, but about the witness a person bears through their living. Dr Larijani bore witness to the values of patience, strategic foresight, and an unshakable loyalty to the ideals he held dear. He served until his very last breath, leaving behind a legacy that is defined not by the noise of the moment but by the quiet impact of a life well-lived.

To remember Dr Ali Larijani is to remember a man who embodied the dignity of service. He was a scholar who understood the weight of history and a servant who understood the needs of the future. As we honour his memory, we find inspiration in his journey—a reminder that the greatest tribute one can offer is a life dedicated to a cause greater than oneself. His physical presence may have left us, but the light of his wisdom and the example of his devotion will continue to guide the hearts of those who value integrity, faith, and the pursuit of a higher calling.

Some journalists chase stories. Amal Khalil belonged to one. She was born in southern Lebanon, lived in southern Lebanon, and on the afternoon of 22 April 2026, in a small house in al-Tayri, where she had taken shelter from one Israeli strike only for a second to find her, she died there too. The land she had reported on for nearly twenty years closed over her, and she became the story she had spent a lifetime refusing to be.

She was forty-three. She had been a witness since she was twenty-two — since the July war of 2006, when she first walked the rubble of her own region with a notebook, and would not stop walking it for the rest of her life. Born in 1984 in al-Baisariyah, a village in the Saida district, she came into the world while Israeli soldiers still occupied her country’s south. She left it while they were bombing it again.

To read her dispatches for Al-Akhbar was to feel that she knew every face she wrote about. She did not parachute into stories. She went home to them. Her colleagues, even the ones who competed with her, remember her as the journalist who would hand you her contacts, her sources, her hard-won keys to the south, and ask only that you tell the truth about what you saw. The young reporters she mentored say she was generous in a profession that rarely is.

She was, by every account, fearless — not in the loud way fearlessness is sometimes performed, but in the patient, daily way of a person who has decided there is somewhere she will not leave. In August 2024, an unknown Israeli number messaged her on WhatsApp. Leave the south, it said, or your head will not stay on your shoulders. Other messages followed, citing details of her life to make sure she understood she was being watched. She did not leave. She kept reporting. She said, more than once, that her presence among the people of the south since 2006 had always been the right choice, and she was not about to make a different one now.

She did not want to be in front of the camera. She taught herself video editing so she could keep her face out of her own films. She was there, she said, to tell the stories of the people — not to become one of them. The cruelty of her death is that the occupation forced her into the frame anyway.

What happened in al-Tayri on the afternoon of 22 April was not a tragedy of war. It was a sequence. An Israeli drone struck a car that she and the photographer Zeinab Faraj had been following, killing the people inside. The two women ran to a nearby house. From inside it, Amal phoned her editors. She phoned her family. She phoned the Lebanese army. The president of Lebanon, while she was still alive beneath the sky, publicly asked the Red Cross and the United Nations to save her. At 4:27 pm, a second strike collapsed the house. Faraj was eventually pulled out, alive. The Red Cross, attempting to reach Amal, was driven back by stun grenades and gunfire. They were prevented from returning for hours. By the time they recovered her, she was dead.

She was the ninth journalist killed in Lebanon this year.

Her brother Ali said, quietly, that Amal had been present in every home in Lebanon, and that every home in Lebanon had now lost her. He said she resembled the south in all its details — its breeze, its valleys, its old houses. Friends remembered the things that did not fit on a press card: that she planted fruit trees with her father in the courtyard of the family home, that she fed the stray cats of the village, that her smile was at home among the thyme and the tobacco fields.

A line from one of the tributes to her has already passed into the language of those who loved her: that Amal wrote her final report in her own blood. It is the kind of phrase that could feel like an excess of grief in another context. Here, it is only accurate. Her body was her last dispatch from the south. Her death told the story she had been telling all along — that to be a journalist on this land, to refuse to be moved off it, is to bear witness with your whole life, until your life itself is the witness.

She wanted no monument larger than the South itself. The south will have to do.

She is survived by her family, her colleagues, and the words she leaves behind — words that, as one of her mourners wrote, continue their mission after her absence: a quiet human act in the face of forgetting.

There is a particular kind of silence that lives inside a prison cell. It is not empty. It is crowded — with faces, with dates, with the sound of a whistle you heard once, decades ago, in a courtyard in Qom.

In this fifth episode of khamenei.ir’s sand-animation series, adapting Cell No. 14, that silence is broken by an artist’s hands. Over three minutes, a single lightbox becomes a mosque. A mosque becomes a courtyard. A courtyard fills with students in turbans. And then, in a single pull of the fingers across the sand, the whole scene is torn open — and a body falls from an upper gallery onto the stones below.

You do not need to understand a word of the narration to feel what is happening. That is the strange gift of sand art: it bypasses language and goes straight to memory. The grains are restless, provisional, always on the edge of being swept away — which is exactly what the Pahlavi regime thought it was doing on 2 Farvardin 1342, when its commandos came for the seminarians of Feiziyeh.

Three minutes. No actors. No score of bombast. Just sand, shadow, and the voice of a man remembering why he was there.

The Nowruz That Never Came

Some springs in Iran are remembered for their blossoms. Others are remembered for the blood that was washed from their stones.

In the pages of Cell No. 14 — the memoir Imam Khamenei composed from the seam between captivity and memory — the Iranian New Year of 1342 (1963) is one of the latter. It was a Nowruz that, by decree of Imam Khomeini, was not to be celebrated at all. The country, he had declared, was in mourning: mourning for a nation being sold to foreign powers, for a constitution in tatters, for an Islam the Pahlavi regime had set itself against. There would be no tables of haft-sin that year in the houses of the faithful. No congratulations. No pretence that all was well.

The regime understood the message perfectly. And it answered it in the only language it knew.

A peaceful gathering, an iron fist

Before Qom, there was Tehran. A peaceful demonstration had formed around Ayatollah Sayyid Ahmad Khansari — a marja of the highest standing, a man whose very presence was a statement that the ulema would not be silenced. Government forces descended on it with batons and boots. That the state was willing to lay hands on Khansari himself was a signal to the whole country: no turban, no rank, no white hair would protect anyone who stood in the Shah’s way.

It was a dress rehearsal. The real performance was being prepared for Qom.

The second of Farvardin

The first day of that withheld Nowruz fell close to the Hijri anniversary of the martyrdom of Imam Ja’far al-Sadiq (peace be upon him). In Qom, as was the custom of the Ulama, mourning gatherings were held. The marja’iyyah sat together. The students of the hawza — the tulab — filled the Feiziyeh courtyard for a ta’ziyah assembly.

On 22 March 1963 — 2 Farvardin 1342 — the Shah’s Imperial Guards came to Qom.

They came in plainclothes and in uniform. They came with weapons and with orders. Their initial target was Imam Khomeini’s own assembly; when that plot failed to take hold, their fury was redirected onto the seminary itself. A whistle is said to have been the signal. At that sound, the commandos closed in on the students.

What followed was not a dispersal. It was a message, written in the blood of young seminarians.

The tulab were beaten with clubs and rifle-butts. Turbans were knocked from heads and trampled. An eighteen-year-old Sayyid was shot dead on the spot. Others were hurled from the upper galleries of the madrasa, thrown down to the stones of the courtyard as if to say: this is how far you will fall if you raise your voice. The students’ meagre possessions — their books, their bedding, the few things a tulab owns — were dragged from the rooms and set alight. Even copies of the Qur’an, Imam Khomeini would later thunder, were torn to pieces that day.

The cell and the courtyard

Years later, after his own arrests, his own interrogations, his own nights in Qasr and Komiteh and the solitary confinement of Cell No. 14, Imam Khamenei would return again and again to the courtyard of Feiziyeh. Not because it was the first crime of the regime — it was not — but because it was the moment the mask was fully removed.

A regime prepared to throw seminarians from a roof on the anniversary of Imam al-Sadiq (a) had already told you everything you needed to know about it. The only remaining question was what a Muslim was prepared to do in response.

For the young Sayyid who, only weeks later, would carry Imam Khomeini’s confidential letter to the clergy of Mashhad — and be arrested, for the first of many times, for the crime of repeating what he had seen — the answer had been settled the moment the news from Qom reached him.

The Nowruz of 1342 never arrived. But something else did. And in the silence of Cell No. 14, he could still hear the whistle.

Cell No. 14: The Autobiography of Ayatollah Khamenei

Over the past week, you have probably read many things in the media about the period of leadership of Martyr Ayatollah Khamenei. However, less attention has been given to the background and earlier life of this great man.

🔹The book Cell No. 14: The Autobiography of Ayatollah Khamenei narrates the story of the first half of the life of Martyr Ayatollah Khamenei, from his childhood in Mashhad to his revolutionary activities in Tehran, and his imprisonment and exile at the hands of the Pahlavi dictatorship.

To listen to the audiobook👇

There is a photograph that will not leave you once you have seen it. An old man’s hand, weathered and veined, resting on the arm of a chair. On his finger, a ring. Inside the ring, a red stone. And on the stone, carved in a curling Arabic script: إنَّ مَعِيَ رَبِّي — “My Lord is with me.”

He wore it in the final days. He wore it while American warships circled the Gulf. He wore it while B-2 bombers cut the sky above his country. He wore it when the world held its breath and waited for Iran to break.

It did not break.

And now the old man is gone, and the ring is still speaking.

The story never ended

To understand the ring, you have to understand how Ayatollah Khamenei read the Quran. Not as an archive. Not as a bedtime tale. As a mirror held up to the present moment, glinting with warnings and promises that never expire.

Every age has its Pharaoh. Every generation has its Moses. The names change; the pattern does not. A tyrant rises. He thinks himself a god. He builds his palaces, his armies, his terrifying fleet. And he sets out to destroy a people who have nothing but faith.

This is the script. It has been running for three thousand years. And Ayatollah Khamenei, for decades, had been quietly telling his people: we are inside it right now.

The verse on his finger

Picture the scene the ring points back to. Moses has led his people to the edge of the Nile. Behind them, the dust rises — Pharaoh’s chariots, Pharaoh’s spears, the full weight of the empire bearing down. His companions break. “We’re being overtaken!” they cry. “It’s over!”

And Moses, who has no army, no weapons, no strategy but God, turns to them and says the impossible: “Never. My Lord is with me. He will guide me.”

Then the sea parts.

This is the verse Ayatollah Khamenei chose to wear on his hand as the empire of our time levelled its guns at him. Not a prayer. Not a plea. A declaration. A signature. A message engraved in stone for anyone who still had eyes to read.

Pharaoh at the door

Trump came with his fleet and his threats and his certainty. He sent Japan’s prime minister to Tehran with a message, expecting the old man to bend. The old man did not bend. “I do not consider Trump worthy of an answer,” he said — and the messenger went home empty-handed, and the world understood that something ancient had just happened again.

Then came the warnings. Ayatollah Khamenei, speaking with the calm of a man reading from a book only he could see: the tyrants always fall at the height of their arrogance. Pharaoh fell. Nimrod fell. This one will fall too. The Titanic, he said, was unsinkable until it sank. Empires are unsinkable until the water is at their throats.

Into the middle of the sea

And then the trap closed.

Because here is the terrible beauty of the Moses story that everyone forgets: the sea did not open to save the believers alone. It opened so that Pharaoh would step into it. It opened to swallow him.

When America stepped into direct war with Iran, it walked onto a road that looked, from above, like victory. From below, it was the seabed. The waves were already God’s soldiers. The calculations that looked so clever in Washington were the calculations of a drowning man who has not yet realised he is drowning.

He finished his work

The old man completed his mission. He led the enemy to the place where there is no way back. And then he left, quietly, the way prophets leave — with a ring still glowing on his finger, bearing the only words that ever mattered.

My Lord is with me.

Now the ring belongs to everyone who saw it. To every Iranian standing in the field. To everyone, anywhere, who has looked at the empires of this world and suspected — quietly, stubbornly, against all the noise — that the sea has already begun to close.

Look at the ring.

And be sure.

He was only seven years old—an age of innocence, of playing, of learning, and of boundless dreams. Makan Nasiri was a bright light in the lives of those who loved him. Today, he is a symbol of an unimaginable sorrow, a little boy who went to school on a Saturday morning and never came home.

On February 28, the unthinkable descended upon the Shajareh Tayyebeh elementary school in Minab. Among the 168 precious children whose lives were violently cut short that day was young Makan. While the world may speak of statistics, treaties, and the cold calculations of aggression, we remember a son, a nephew, and a student whose laugh once filled the hallways.

For forty-six agonising days, his family scoured the rubble with bare hands and broken hearts. His uncle, Hamzeh, alongside twenty family members, led a desperate search through the devastation and the nearby woods. They prayed for a miracle, searching endlessly for the familiar birthmark that darkened on Makan’s skin in the winter. Instead of their beloved boy, the family was left with haunting echoes: a blood-stained blue sweater and a single cream-colored sneaker, discovered among the trees thirty-eight days later.

Makan's body was never found.

For his mother, Asieh, the pain of that morning remains frozen in time—the frantic phone call from his teacher, Ms. Mandana Salari, the desperate rush to the school alongside her husband, and the devastating realisation that a sanctuary of learning had been reduced to ash. Today, she finds a quiet, heartbreaking solace in the belief that God spared her the insurmountable agony of physically placing her little boy into the earth.

In Minab’s martyr graveyard, there lies an empty grave for Makan. In the Mahdieh mosque in his neighbourhood, a small glass box holds his sweater and his shoe—holy relics of a pure life taken by the cruelties of an imposed war. Soon, a street in his father's birthplace of Khomeini Shahr will bear his name, ensuring that his legacy outlives the violence that took him.

Makan was a child who deserved to grow up, to read his books, and to wear his sneakers out on the playground. Though his physical form was taken from this world, leaving not even a trace behind, his spirit remains eternally etched in the heart of the nation. He is the face of the innocent, a little martyr whose memory will never fade. We honour him, we weep for him, and we promise never to forget the boy in the blue sweater.

A Son of Shiraz, Named for Husayn

On the tenth day of Muharram in the year 1332 AH — 9 December 1913 by the common reckoning — a boy was born in the ancient city of Shiraz. His father, Sayyid Muhammad Taqi, was far from home that day, making pilgrimage in the sacred soil of Karbala. When news of his son’s birth reached him, standing at the shrine of Imam Husayn (peace be upon him) on the very anniversary of Ashura, he gave the child a name that would shape a lifetime: Abdul Husayn — the servant of Husayn.

The name was a promise. And for sixty-eight years, the child who bore it kept that promise in full.

He was born into a family of exceptional lineage. A Sayyid — a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him and his family) — he came from a line of scholars and mujtahids whose intellectual heritage in Fars province stretched back some eight hundred years. His grandfather, Sayyid Hidayat Allah, and his father both stood among the recognised religious authorities of their region. Piety was not something Abdul Husayn had to seek; it was the air he breathed.

He lost his father at the age of twelve. But the orphan of Shiraz was not alone — the scholars of his city closed ranks around him, and he pressed forward with a seriousness that astonished his teachers.

The Young Imam and the Defiance of a Boy

By the age of twenty, he was already leading congregational prayers at the Baqirkhan Mosque in the Bazaar-Morgh quarter of Shiraz. A young man standing in the mihrab, guiding elders in the worship of Allah — this alone would have been a distinction for any cleric.

But those were the years of Reza Shah Pahlavi, and the regime had begun its war against the visible markers of Islamic faith. The turban and the cloak of the cleric were targeted. To keep his religious dress, the young Sayyid had to sit for humiliating state examinations designed to cull the ranks of the ulama. He passed them — but the regime soon found other reasons to silence him. His outspoken sermons brought arrest and imprisonment. Finally, he was given a cruel choice: abandon the robe of the scholar, or leave the country.

In 1935, he chose exile over compromise and set out for Najaf al-Ashraf — the city that shelters the tomb of the Commander of the Faithful, Imam Ali (peace be upon him).

Najaf: Where the Scholar Was Forged

In the hawza of Najaf, he sat at the feet of giants. Ayatollah Sayyid Abu al-Hasan Isfahani, Ayatollah Muhammad Kazim Shirazi, and others of that extraordinary generation poured their learning into him. He immersed himself in jurisprudence, the principles of jurisprudence (usul al-fiqh), theology, Quranic exegesis, and the Arabic language — and in time he was granted the ijaza of ijtihad, the formal permission to derive religious law independently from its sources.

But what his teachers saw in him was something beyond legal competence. He had a trembling heart. He wept in prayer. He spoke of the Hereafter not as a theologian citing references, but as a man who seemed already to be walking its edge. His teacher, Muhammad Kazim Shirazi, recognising that this student’s place was among the people, urged him to return home. And so, after the fall of Reza Shah, Shiraz received back her son — no longer the young man who had left, but a mujtahid and a guide.

The Reformer of Shiraz

Back in his native city, Ayatollah Dastghaib threw himself into the work of spiritual renewal. He spent lavishly from his own pocket to restore the Jame Masjid Ateq, the great congregational mosque of Shiraz, which had fallen into disrepair. He taught. He counselled. He opened his home to the poor. He gathered around him generations of students who would carry his influence across Iran.

And he wrote.

His books were not written for the scholarly elite alone. They were written for the believer who wanted to pray better, to fear Allah more sincerely, to understand the weight of his deeds. Among his enduring works are:

• Gunahan-e Kabira (The Greater Sins) — perhaps his most widely read work, a three-volume exposition of the major sins in Islam, still printed and translated across the Muslim world

• Qalb al-Salim (The Sound Heart) — a treatise on the purified heart as the only currency accepted on the Day of Judgement

• Salat al-Khashi’een — on the prayer of those who tremble before Allah

• Ma’ad — on the Return to Allah and the realities of the Hereafter

• At-Tawba — on the science of repentance

• Biographies of Sayyida Fatima al-Zahra and Sayyida Zaynab al-Kubra (peace be upon them)

• Commentary on Surah Ya-Sin

• Works on seeking protection from Satan and on the soul at peace (nafs al-mutma’inna)

His prose has a rare quality: the rigour of the jurist married to the warmth of the spiritual guide. Readers do not merely learn from his books; they are rebuked by them, consoled by them, and drawn by them toward something higher.

The Voice That Would Not Be Silenced

As the Shah’s regime grew increasingly brutal and secular, Ayatollah Dastghaib’s sermons grew sharper. He aligned himself openly with the movement of Imam Khomeini. On 5 June 1963 — the date of the uprising that is often remembered as the true beginning of the Islamic Revolution — he was arrested and sent into internal exile in Tehran.

The years that followed were years of pressure, surveillance, and intermittent detention. In 1977 he was placed under harsh house arrest; only the eruption of his people into the streets in his defence forced the regime to back down. When the regime massacred protesters in Shiraz and imposed a curfew, he was again arrested. SAVAK, the Shah’s secret police, kept thick dossiers on him — documents that have since been published and that reveal, in their own dry official language, the story of a scholar who refused to stop speaking.

Through all of it, he refused exile, refused silence, and refused despair.

After the Revolution: The Shepherd of Fars

When the Islamic Revolution triumphed in February 1979, Imam Khomeini — by direct decree — appointed Ayatollah Dastghaib as Imam of the Friday Prayer of Shiraz and as his personal representative in Fars province. The people of Fars elected him as their representative to the Assembly of Experts that drafted the constitution of the new Islamic Republic. He was made director of the Fars Seminary, and he reopened the seminaries of Qavam, Hashemieh, and Astaneh, which the Pahlavi regime had shuttered.

He was now at the height of his public role. And yet those who knew him describe the same man they had always known: austere in his personal habits, sitting on the floor with the poor of his congregation, weeping through the night prayers, giving away what came into his hands. His Friday sermons in Shiraz were powerful — defending the revolution, explaining the doctrine of wilayat al-faqih, and exposing the groups that had begun their campaign of terror against the new order, foremost among them the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK).

He did not fear them. He named them.

11 December 1981: The Friday That Shiraz Will Not Forget

It was an ordinary Friday morning. The Ayatollah was making his way to lead the jumu’ah prayer, as he had done countless times before. An MEK operative — reports indicate a female assassin who had disguised herself to avoid suspicion — approached and detonated the bomb she was carrying.

Ayatollah Dastghaib was martyred instantly, along with a number of his companions. His body had to be gathered piece by piece from the walls and ground of that narrow Shirazi alley.

The city broke. For days, the streets of Shiraz echoed with the sound of weeping. Imam Khomeini, receiving the news in Tehran, issued a message of mourning in which he honoured the martyred scholar and asked the searching question every murdered revolutionary leader’s followers were asking in that terrible year: Is this an accident, or has it been planned? It was planned — part of the MEK’s campaign of assassination that had already claimed Ayatollah Beheshti, Ayatollah Qadhi Tabatabai, Ayatollah Madani, and many others.

He was buried where he had so often prayed: within the sacred precincts of the Shah Cheragh shrine in Shiraz, near the resting place of Ahmad ibn Musa ibn Ja’far (peace be upon him), the brother of Imam Ali al-Ridha. Pilgrims who come to visit the shrine still pause at his grave, recite the Fatiha, and whisper a salaam to the shahid who fell in the service of his Imam and his people.

The Legacy of the Martyr of the Mihrab

Shiraz’s international airport now bears his name — Shahid Dastghaib International Airport — a small worldly echo of a much deeper debt. But the greater memorial is the one that renews itself every time a believer picks up a copy of Greater Sins and feels his heart move; every time a student of the hawza opens Qalb al-Salim and learns what it means to have a sound heart on the Day of Reckoning.

Some scholars leave behind books. Some leave behind students. Some leave behind institutions. Ayatollah Sayyid Abdul Husayn Dastghaib Shirazi left behind all three — and then he left behind his own blood, poured out on the stones of the city he had loved and served for more than half a century.

He was named for Hussein. He lived for Husayn. He died on the road to the Friday prayer, as the Master of Martyrs had died on the road to his own stand at Karbala. The parallel is not lost on those who honour him.

May Allah be pleased with him, and raise him with those whom He has blessed — the prophets, the truthful, the martyrs, and the righteous — and what excellent companions are they.

Before she was a name in a news headline, Ritaj Reihan was simply a nine-year-old girl with a dress she couldn’t wait to wear.

On the morning of April 9, Ritaj’s mind wasn’t on the war, nor the military boundaries drawn just two kilometres from her classroom. She was a third-grader, buzzing with the infectious, bright excitement of a child preparing for a family celebration. Her uncle was getting married, and earlier that day, Ritaj had been talking eagerly about the special dress she would wear for the joyous occasion.

Like countless mornings before, her father walked her to the gates of Abu Ubaida al-Jarrah School in northern Gaza’s Beit Lahia.

“I dropped her off at the school gate, never imagining it would be the last time I’d see her walking,” he recalled. Barely an hour later, his world shattered.

Ritaj’s classroom wasn’t a traditional room with solid walls; she learned inside a makeshift tent, a testament to a child’s pursuit of education even amidst total destruction. There, sitting at her desk alongside 44 of her classmates, Ritaj was doing exactly what a nine-year-old is supposed to do. She was working through math equations, her pencil moving across the pages of her workbook as she focused on her lesson.

Then, the unthinkable happened. Gunfire from Israeli forces stationed near the so-called ‘Yellow Line’ pierced the fragile sanctuary of the tent. Ritaj was struck in the neck. The little girl who had just been dreaming of a wedding collapsed at her desk, killed instantly in front of her terrified peers.

The agonising reality of her murder was delivered to her mother in the most heart-wrenching way imaginable. Alongside Ritaj’s lifeless body, her family was handed her school notebook. The pages, once filled with the innocent scribbles of a child solving math problems, were now soaked red.

“This is not ink,” her grieving mother wept, holding the ruined pages. “This is my daughter’s blood.”

Ritaj Reihan was not a statistic. She was a beloved daughter, a diligent student, and a niece anticipating a celebration. She was a little girl who deserved to solve her math equations in peace, to wear her beautiful dress, and to walk back out of those school gates into the arms of her father.

Today, we honour Ritaj. We remember her excitement, her quiet focus at her school desk, and the profound, irreplaceable light she brought to her family’s life. While the blood on her workbook remains a permanent stain on the conscience of the world, the memory of her innocent, joyful spirit will forever be cherished by those who loved her.

As part of the 40th day tribute, a quiet and deeply personal expression of grief emerges—seen not through speeches, but through the hearts of children.

To them, he was never distant—not a figure behind titles, but someone close, someone who cared.

When they speak of him, their words are simple: kind, strong, brave. Yet what lingers is not the words themselves, but the emotion behind them—a girl holding back tears, a child falling silent, a quiet wish just to hold him once.

Through their eyes, strength is not loud or distant. It is standing firm so others can feel safe.

A Simple Sanctuary of Grief

The memories they hold are gentle—a smile, a brief embrace, a moment of closeness. And in those memories, something endures: a love that does not fade, even in absence.

From their grief, a quiet resolve begins to grow. They may not understand everything, but they understand enough—to love, to remember, and to continue.

Forty days have passed, yet the weight of the loss remains profound. The 40th day of mourning—a deeply symbolic period in our tradition, echoing the eternal grief of Karbala—serves not as an end, but as a reaffirmation of a path forged in resistance. The 37-year leadership of Ayatollah Sayyed Ali Khamenei was more than a political tenure; it was a lifelong testament to unwavering faith and defiance against global arrogance. His martyrdom seals a legacy that no weapon can erase.

From the Shadows of Tyranny to the Frontlines of Faith

Ayatollah Khamenei’s journey did not begin in the halls of power, but in the gruelling crucible of grassroots struggle. During the despotic, Western-backed Pahlavi era—a time when the life, property, and honour of Iranians were treated as the mere personal dominion of the Shah—he stood as a beacon of political defiance. He endured the darkness of the regime’s notorious prisons, his spirit unbroken.

When the Islamic Revolution triumphed, the trials only shifted. The imposed Holy Defence of the 1980s tested the soul of the nation. When war ravaged Khuzestan, Ayatollah Khamenei did not retreat into the safety of an administrative office. He went to the frontlines, fully illuminating the depth of his resolve. Against the backdrop of tyranny, he crafted a new model of revolutionary participation, grounded deeply in Islamic law, cultural independence, and the active, dignified engagement of every citizen.

A Fortress of Self-Reliance

Understanding that true independence requires strength, his inspiring and expert guidance led Iran’s defence industry from a state of vulnerable dependency on imported hardware to the proud production of world-class weaponry. Breakthroughs in air-defence missiles, once deemed impossible, became reality. He championed the revival and advancement of drone technology, integrating artificial intelligence to extend operational reach and protect the skies of the Republic.

His strategic vision brought this Quranic imperative to life, ensuring the nation could stand tall and unyielding before its adversaries.

This philosophy of strength was deeply intertwined with his economic vision. Recognising the economy as a central pillar of national survival, his annual declarations—from “Economic Jihad” to “Resistance Economy”—were not mere slogans. They were ideological battle cries for ethical labour and sustained planning, echoing the tireless ethos of Imam Ali (AS) in cultivating the land and safeguarding the community’s self-sufficiency against oppressive forces.

The Soul of the Nation: Culture and Empowerment

Yet, he was not only a man of defence and politics; he was a guardian of the nation’s soul. Long before his political ascent, he harboured a lifelong devotion to Persian literature and poetry. Even amidst the heaviest burdens of leadership, he found solace and purpose in gatherings with revolutionary poets, nurturing the cultural heartbeat and literary discourse of Iran.

His profound respect for the dignity of women was rooted in the purest Islamic traditions. Drawing inspiration from the exalted station of Lady Fatima Zahra (SA), he championed an approach to women’s empowerment that beautifully synthesised religious principles with societal advancement. He fiercely defended the progressive nature of the Quranic view on women’s identity, once remarking with immense pride in 2018:

“The fact that there are so many knowledgeable, educated, broad-minded and outstanding women in intellectual and practical areas, in our society is really one of the greatest glories of the Islamic Republic. This is an extremely wonderful blessing and a great source of honour.”

The Ultimate Seal of Martyrdom

Today, as we mark his 40th day, we recognise that his martyrdom is not a defeat, but the ultimate seal on a 37-year legacy of victory. He lived a life of absolute steadfastness, paving the way for a resilient society. Though he has returned to his Lord, the independent, capable, and faithful nation he helped build remains his eternal, living monument.

As he himself once profoundly reflected: "Whatever you like will be separated from you one day..." While his physical presence has now been separated from the nation and his followers around the world who held him dear, the indestructible ideals he instilled—of resistance, dignity, and unwavering devotion to God—will never be severed from the heart of the Islamic Republic.

In the face of devastating conflict, the true measure of a person is often revealed in a single, split-second decision. For Mohammad Daher, a 17-year-old from Arab Salim, that moment came when he chose to run toward danger rather than away from it. Known as a “courageous son of the South,” Mohammad’s life was cut short in an act of pure heroism that has left an indelible mark on his community.

A Life Defined by Kindness

Before he became a symbol of sacrifice, Mohammad was a beloved figure in his village. Despite his young age, he owned a small restaurant where he was known for his “smiling and angelic face.” His mother, Naela Abou Zeid, recalls a young man who treated everyone with kindness—a gentle and peaceful soul who was always ready to help. To the people of Arab Salim, Mohammad was more than just a neighbour; he was a friend to all, young and old alike.

The Final Act of Heroism

The day of his martyrdom began with a simple errand. Mohammad’s car had broken down, and he was on his way to have it repaired with his friend, Ahmad Oneissi. As they travelled, they witnessed an airstrike targeting a vehicle nearby. Among those under fire were Ali Sheaib and Fatima Ftouni.

Fatima, having survived the first missile, was running toward Mohammad’s car, desperately seeking help. In that moment, Mohammad didn’t hesitate. He didn’t think about the aircraft overhead or the threat of another strike. He saw a human being in need and acted with the chivalry that defined his character.

Mohammad stopped his car and rushed toward Fatima to rescue her. It was during this selfless attempt to save another that the second missile struck. Mohammad was martyred instantly, alongside his friend Ahmad and Fatima.

A Legacy of Bravery

Mohammad’s story is a testament to the spirit of the people of Southern Lebanon. As his mother proudly stated, “What Mohammad did was an act of true heroism.” She describes the people of the South as helpful, fearless, and deeply connected to their land—individuals who “throw themselves into danger to rescue others.”

At just 17, Mohammad Daher had already lived a life rich in character. His final actions were not those of a victim, but of a hero who placed the safety of others above his own.

Honouring the Martyr

Today, the name Mohammad Daher is spoken with reverence. He remains a beacon of hope and a reminder that even in the darkest of times, the light of human compassion can never be extinguished. His sacrifice in the name of humanity and his devotion to his community serve as an inspiration to all who value courage and selflessness.

Rest in peace, Mohammad Daher—a true hero, a son of the South, and a martyr for humanity.

Following the events of February 28, 2026, many have grappled with the news of Ayatollah Khamenei’s martyrdom. However, analysing this event solely through a materialistic lens leads to a profound misunderstanding of the truth. To answer the question, “Is he dead and gone, or what is he doing now?” we must turn to the Holy Qur’an and the fundamental principles of martyrdom in the struggle between truth and falsehood.

The Misconception of Death

The primary error in conventional analysis is equating “martyrdom” with “death.” God explicitly rejects this linguistic and spiritual equivalency. In the Quran, believers are instructed:

This is not merely a metaphor or a matter of language. It is a literal spiritual reality. A martyr has not been “eliminated” or removed from existence. As the Quran further clarifies:

Because a martyr is alive, they remain a source of action and effect in the world.

The Unfinished Work of the Martyr

Another common mistaken belief is that a leader’s path comes to a dead end upon their martyrdom. On the contrary, the “work of the martyr” is never cut off; it is brought to completion by the martyr himself.

Freed from physical limitations, Ayatollah Khamenei’s mission has not ended—it has transformed. Those who desire to be highly effective on the path of truth actively choose martyrdom because it grants them eternal life, lasting power, and a far-reaching influence to guide humanity.

A Greater, More Powerful Mission

In the material world, Ayatollah Khamenei was tasked with leading the people. Today, his mission has elevated. “Martyr Khamenei” now acts on a spiritual plane to inspire souls, removing fear from the hearts of believers and inspiring those who fight for the truth.

The Quran describes this enduring presence and the joy of the martyrs:

Operating with greatly increased capacity and power, “Martyr Khamenei” is viewed as far more dangerous to the enemies of truth than he was in his physical form.

The Certainty of the Enemy’s Defeat

The enemy continuously falls into the same trap, surprised by the consequences of their actions. Their flawed calculations assume that by killing a leader, they remove them from the battlefield and force the front of truth to surrender. They fundamentally fail to understand the transcendent influence that a martyr’s blood has on the world.

The Leader remains present in the field, continuing to guide the front of truth. It is because of this spiritual reality that the enemy has not achieved its goals. By God’s will and power, the final victory belongs to the believers.

Reference: Shaykh Ali Reza Panahian

Innocence and Aspirations

The performance opens by highlighting the pure, unblemished aspirations of the school’s young students. Amidst a mock-up of a destroyed classroom—where desks are adorned with flowers, framed photos of children, and symbolic blood-stained handprints—young actors wearing angelic wings share the vibrant dreams of the students:

• The Athlete: A young boy dreaming of one day joining the national football team.

• The Pilots: Children wishing to navigate the skies, eager to transport people safely and to take their fearful parents on flights.

• The Doctor: A student who loves drawing, hoping to get the good grades required to heal the sick.

• The Architect: A visionary child wanting to design buildings with spacious, safe courtyards where children can play freely.

A Day of Darkness

The narrative takes a devastating turn as an adult narrator steps forward to recount the horrific day an explosion tore through the Minab School. She paints a visceral picture of the chaos, describing the terrifying moments of pulling the children close to her chest as the world went completely “dark,” forever silencing the voices of these young students.

From Tragedy to Defiance

Despite the heavy grief, the performance refuses to end in despair, instead pivoting to a powerful declaration of faith and national fortitude. The narrator delivers an impassioned speech, emphasising that with unwavering trust in God, no weapon or external force can defeat their people.

The presentation concludes with a defiant, patriotic message: the young boys and girls who lived through those years of struggle and stood on their own feet have now grown into the very doctors, engineers, and defenders of the nation. Highlighting that today’s youth are the ones standing behind the country’s defences, the event culminates in resolute chants of “Allahu Akbar” beneath waving Iranian flags, framing the historical tragedy as the bedrock of an unbreakable national spirit.

She was not just a correspondent, and she was certainly never just a name on a screen. To those who knew her, Fatima Ftouni was a steady presence—a woman defined by a profound warmth and an unbreakable devotion to her craft. When news broke that an Israeli airstrike had directly targeted her vehicle in South Lebanon—a car clearly marked “PRESS”—the loss was felt not just as a blow to journalism, but as a deep, personal wound to all who loved her.

Martyred alongside her brother, Mohammad, and veteran Al-Manar journalist Ali Shoaib, Fatima’s final moments were spent doing exactly what she believed she was put on this earth to do: standing alongside her people and bringing the raw, unfiltered reality of their resistance to the world.

Before she ever set foot on the volatile frontlines, Fatima was a fixture in the Al Mayadeen newsroom. Serving as an editor for Al Mayadeen, her colleagues remember a journalist deeply committed to the truth, radiating a kindness that anchored those around her. But when the time came to step out from behind the desk and onto the scarred soil of South Lebanon, Fatima did not hesitate. The warmth she was known for did not fade in the face of war; rather, it sharpened into a fierce, unwavering courage. In conditions that would have driven the most seasoned veterans away, Fatima stayed. She reported. She utterly refused to be silenced.

Perhaps nothing encapsulates her towering strength more than the events of earlier this month. When an Israeli strike targeted a home in Toul, claiming the lives of her own uncle and his family, Fatima was the one who delivered the news. She stood on live television, steady and present, broadcasting the shattering loss of her own flesh and blood to the world. In the exact moment she learned what had been taken from her, she held her grief with a quiet, unimaginable dignity, prioritising the story of her people above her own breaking heart.

The missiles that struck her press car were a deliberate attempt to extinguish a witness. But while the strike may have taken Fatima, her brother, and her esteemed colleague from this world, it failed to erase what she stood for.

Fatima Ftouni lived her life in service to a truth that outlasts the weapons used against it. She is remembered today not merely as a casualty of aggression, but as a beloved friend, a fiercely devoted sister, and a martyr whose legacy of courage will echo through the valleys of the South forever. They may have targeted the messenger, but her voice—warm, steady, and defiant—will never be silenced.

In a highly charged and emotional speech, Josephine Guilbeau, a former US Army intelligence and counter-terrorism officer, publicly condemned the United States military for the devastating February 28 missile strike on the Shajareh Tayyebeh girls’ school in Minab, Iran.

The bombing, which resulted in the deaths of over 165 people—primarily young schoolgirls—is a documented tragedy. However, Guilbeau’s address goes beyond mourning the martyred victims; she explicitly dismisses any narrative that the strike was an accident, using her 17-year intelligence background to argue that the attack was a premeditated war crime.

A Rejection of the “Targeting Error” Narrative

While US military investigations have suggested the strike on the school—located adjacent to an IRGC military base—was the result of a targeting error or outdated intelligence maps, Guilbeau argued that the military’s advanced technology makes such an accident virtually impossible.

She noted that the school was surrounded by bright, colourful murals and paintings of children, making its identity obvious. Furthermore, she emphasised that modern Tomahawk missiles are equipped with real-time targeting imagery and onboard cameras. Paired with constant satellite surveillance by multiple intelligence agencies, she asserted that the military command had to have known exactly what they were hitting.

“We just bombed a school knowing it was a school,” Guilbeau stated, condemning the subsequent silence and what she described as “lies and excuses” from leadership.

The Timeline of the Strike

Guilbeau provided a chilling timeline of the attack, which began around 10:00 AM. As school staff at Minab desperately attempted to evacuate the children, she detailed how the compound was struck repeatedly by Tomahawk cruise missiles fired from the guided-missile destroyer USS Spruance.

According to her account, one of the strikes specifically hit a prayer room where children had been moved for shelter, resulting in the massive loss of life. She further highlighted a disturbing lack of accountability: following the massacre, the USS Spruance simply conducted a replenishment at sea to restock its weapons. She noted there was no pause for review, no immediate investigation, and no calls for the command structure—specifically naming the ship’s executive officers—to answer to Congress or the American people for the civilian casualties.

Applying the Definition of Terrorism

Drawing on her background as a counter-terrorism officer, Guilbeau turned the US government’s own definitions against it. She defined terrorism as the premeditated use of violence against civilians or property to induce fear or coercion for political or ideological objectives.

Looking at the undeniable reality of the girls killed in Minab, she delivered a damning conclusion regarding the actions of her former employer: “By our own definition of terrorism... we are the terrorists. We are the bad guys.”

A Desperate Plea to the Navy

Warning of an impending “bloodbath” and framing US service members as pawns for the political elite, Guilbeau concluded her speech with a direct and urgent plea to Captain Patrick J. Sullivan, commander of the amphibious assault ship USS Tripoli.

She implored him to “stop the ship now” and “turn the USS Tripoli around.” She warned that continuing to follow orders in this conflict would make him complicit in war crimes, stating that the blood and death of his own Marines would ultimately be on his hands.

The Human Cost

Ultimately, beyond the geopolitical manoeuvrings, the intelligence reports, and the military strategies, remains a devastating and irreplaceable loss. One hundred and sixty-five little girls—children with names, families, and futures—went to school to learn and never returned home. Their laughter, dreams, and potential were silenced in a place that should have been their ultimate sanctuary. As the world grapples with the justifications of war and the actions of military superpowers, the haunting reality of the Minab school bombing serves as a heartbreaking reminder of the true cost of conflict. The memories of those martyred girls demand that we do not look away, and that we deeply question the devastating price of war when it is paid by the most innocent among us.

The recent publication of the will of the Minister of Intelligence, Hujjat al-Islam Sayyid Ismail Khatib, offers a rare window into the internal moral and ideological compass of a high-ranking official within the Islamic Republic of Iran. Far from being a mere legal document, the will serves as a “Manshur” (Charter) for his descendants and followers, blending traditional Shia piety with a rigid commitment to the revolutionary state.

A Foundation of Devotion

The first half of the document is deeply rooted in the traditions of Ahl al-Bayt (the Prophet’s Family). Khatib emphasises the “metaphysical necessities” of a believer’s life: constant recitation of the Quran, the performance of Nafila (supererogatory) prayers, and the significance of Ziyarat (pilgrimage).

By listing specific supplications such as the Ziyarat Ashura and the Dua al-Faraj, Khatib aligns his personal identity with the expectation of the Hidden Imam. This spiritual rigour is presented not just as a private matter, but as the essential fuel required to sustain the burdens of public office and revolutionary struggle.

The Doctrine of the “Middle Path”

A recurring theme in the testament is the concept of moderation, though it is defined through a specific theological lens. Khatib warns his children against “extremes,” which he characterises as either preceding or lagging behind the leadership.

“The one who precedes them is a renegade, the one who lags behind them is lost, and the one who adheres to them is saved.”

This passage highlights a central tenet of the Islamic Republic’s political theory: total adherence to the Wilayat al-Faqih (Guardianship of the Jurist). To Khatib, the path to salvation is synonymous with absolute obedience to the Supreme Leader, whom he views as the deputy of the Mahdi.

Political Continuity and the “Divine Gift”

Perhaps the most notable section of the will is the explicit mention of Ayatollah Sayyid Mujtaba Khamenei. By describing his appointment or presence as a “divine gift,” Khatib signals a strong endorsement of political continuity within the current leadership structure. This reflects the high level of trust and the perceived “sacredness” of the leadership lineage among the state’s elite.

Accountability and “Bayt al-Mal”

Despite his high-ranking position in the Ministry of Intelligence—a role often shrouded in secrecy and power—Khatib’s will expresses a striking concern for the Bayt al-Mal (the public treasury). He requests that the Supreme Leader be asked for forgiveness on his behalf regarding “Shariah rights.” This underscores a traditional Islamic anxiety regarding the handling of public funds and the heavy responsibility that comes with state authority.

Legacy of Martyrdom and Family

The document concludes with a focus on the “social contract” of the believer:

• Social Justice: He urges his family to treat the poor as “participants” in their lives, emphasising the preservation of dignity over mere charity.

• Honour and Kinship: He stresses the importance of family ties (Silat al-Rahm) and maintaining the honour of others in speech.

• The Chain of Martyrs: By invoking names like Hassan and Majid Bagheri, he links his own legacy to the “sacred defence” and the foundational sacrifices of the revolution.

Conclusion

The testament of Ismail Khatib is a synthesis of the mystic and the militant. It portrays a worldview where the administrative duties of a Minister are inseparable from the spiritual duties of a cleric. For Khatib, the survival of the Islamic Republic is not merely a political goal, but a divine mandate that requires a specific blend of piety, moderation, and unwavering loyalty to the jurist-leader.

The Man Who Refused to Blink

Ali Shoaib was a man of the borders. While others sought the safety of distant studios, Ali found his home in the “grey zones”—the places where the air is thick with tension and the smell of wild thyme. He was possessed by a singular, quiet courage. He didn’t just report on the resistance; he embodied the spirit of a witness who refused to blink in the face of the occupier.

His colleagues often joked that Ali knew every rock and olive tree from Naqoura to the Shebaa Farms. He wasn’t just looking for a “scoop.” He was looking for the truth of a people who refused to be uprooted. When he spoke into his microphone, it wasn’t the voice of a detached journalist; it was the voice of a son, a brother, and a neighbour.

A Lens Fuelled by Love

In the program SOBH and throughout his decades of service, you could see it in his eyes—a deep, weary, yet unbreakable love for his country. Ali saw the beauty in the ruins and the strength in the elderly women who stayed in their homes despite the shelling.

He understood that a camera could be more powerful than a tank if it was held by someone with a pure heart. He took pride in being the “eyes” for those who couldn’t see the reality of the frontier. He walked where others feared to tread, not out of a desire for fame, but out of a sacred sense of duty to those whose voices are often drowned out by the roar of war.

“To be a witness is a heavy burden,” he once seemed to suggest through his tireless work. “But to stay silent is a heavier one.”

The Final Sunset

Ali Shoaib lived his life in the open, under the sun of the South. It is perhaps a tragic poetry that he gave his final breath on that same sun-drenched earth. He didn’t die as a bystander; he died as a participant in the history of his people.

He leaves behind more than just a library of news reports. He leaves a legacy of what it means to be a “Citizen Journalist” in the truest sense—someone whose loyalty is to the truth and to the dignity of the oppressed.

As the bells toll and the prayers rise from the minarets of the South, we do not just mourn a reporter. We mourn a guardian. We mourn a man who spent thirty years standing at the edge of the world so that we wouldn’t have to.

Ali Shoaib A soul of the South, now returned to the soil.