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.

In the early hours of a quiet morning in Tehran, the world lost more than just a brilliant mind; it lost a father, a mentor, and a gentle soul who believed that the pursuit of science was a sacred path. Dr. Saeed Shamghadri, a distinguished Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering at the Iran University of Science and Technology (IUST), was martyred alongside his two young children, Mohammad and Reyhane, in an act of aggression that struck the heart of a residential neighbourhood.

To his students, Dr. Shamghadri was the “Quiet Architect,” a man who could unravel the most complex electromagnetic theories with a patient smile. He didn’t just teach circuits and systems; he taught resilience. In a world that often seeks to stifle the scientific progress of sovereign nations, he remained a steadfast pillar of academic excellence, guiding the next generation of Iranian engineers with a vision of a self-sufficient and enlightened future.

The tragedy of his departure is compounded by the loss of his children, whose laughter was silenced in the very place they should have felt safest. Their martyrdom serves as a harrowing reminder of the human cost of geopolitical aggression—where the sanctity of the home and the innocence of childhood are discarded as “collateral.”

Yet, on the pages of themartyr.net, we do not remember Dr. Shamghadri through the lens of victimhood. We remember him through the legacy he leaves behind: the research papers that continue to inspire, the students who now carry his torch, and the unwavering dignity with which he served his country. He was a man of the pen and the prayer mat, proving that true power lies not in the machinery of war, but in the enduring light of knowledge and faith.

As the academic halls of IUST mourn their fallen brother, we find solace in the belief that the blood of the scholar and the innocent is never spilled in vain. It waters the seeds of a future where no child has to fear the sky, and where the quest for truth remains the ultimate form of resistance.

In the sacred dust of Qom, where the faithful seek refuge and scholars seek light, a new chapter of sacrifice has been written in blood. On the 27th of March, 2026, the silence of the night was shattered not by the call to prayer, but by the fire of an air raid. When the smoke cleared, ten members of a single family—three generations of love and devotion—had been elevated to the rank of martyrdom.

The Innocence of the Little Birds

Among those who returned to their Creator were four children. In their short lives, they knew the warmth of a mother’s embrace and the peace of their ancestral home. Today, they are remembered not as victims of a “strike,” but as the “Little Birds of Qom,” whose laughter was silenced by iron and fire. They died alongside three women and three men of their kin, proving that even in the heart of a holy city, no doorstep is sacred to the oppressor.

A Testimony of Resilience

The targeting of a residential home in a city defined by spirituality is a testament to the nature of this aggression. It is an attempt to break the spirit of a people by striking at their most intimate circles. Yet, as the neighbours gathered to pull the fallen from the ruins, there were no cries of defeat—only the steady recitation of faith.

To the world, they may be a headline. To us, they are a beacon. Their home, once filled with the mundane joys of family life, is now a site of testimony. They did not seek this war, yet they met its cruelty with the ultimate sacrifice.

An Eternal Legacy

The martyrs of Qom remind us that the path of justice is often paved with the greatest sorrows. As they are laid to rest in the soil of the city they loved, their names are etched into the eternal memory of the resistance. They leave behind an empty house, but a filled spirit for all those who remain to witness their story.

May their souls rest in the proximity of the righteous, and may their sacrifice hasten the dawn of true peace and justice.

Video of the Maqtal

This is a video of the rendition of this maqtal for Imam Ali Ibn Abi Talib

Audio of the Maqtal

اَلسَّلامُ عَلَيْكَ يَا أَمِينَ اللَّهِ فِي أَرْضِهِ وَحُجَّتَهُ عَلَى عِبَادِهِ
اَلسَّلامُ عَلَيْكَ يَا أَمِيرَ الْمُؤْمِنِينَ
نَشْهَدُ أَنَّكَ جَاهَدْتَ فِي اللَّهِ حَقَّ جِهَادِهِ
وَعَمِلْتَ بِكِتَابِهِ وَاتَّبَعْتَ سُنَنَ نَبِيِّهِ صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَآلِهِ
حَتَّى دَعَاكَ اللَّهُ إِلَيْهِ
فَقَبَضَكَ إِلَيْهِ بِاخْتِيَارِهِ
وَأَلْزَمَ أَعْدَاءَكَ الْحُجَّةَ مَعَ مَا لَكَ مِنَ الْحُجَجِ الْبَالِغَةِ عَلَى جَمِيعِ خَلْقِهِ

Peace be upon you, O Trustee of God on His earth, and His proof upon His servants.
Peace be upon you, O Commander of the Faithful.
We bear witness that you strove in the way of God as He deserves to be striven for, and you acted by His Book, and followed the ways of His Prophet — peace and blessings be upon him and his family —
until God called you to Himself,
and took you by His choosing,
and made binding upon your enemies the proof — alongside the proofs you had already established upon all of His creation.

— Adapted from Ziyarat Amin Allah, pluralised from the singular

An Alawiyyah Maqtal

The Voice of the Awaited One

I speak to you in the month of God.

In the month when heaven descends to meet the earth, when the gates are flung open, when the chains of Satans are bound — and yet, the chains of tyranny have never hung heavier upon the necks of the faithful.

I speak to you from behind the veils of time, but do not mistake my absence for distance.

I am here.

I am here in the breath between your iftaar and your prayer.

I am here in the silence after the Quran is closed and the tears begin.

I am here — and I am burning.

For this is not any Ramadhan.

This is the Ramadhan in which my grandfather was struck in the mihrab, and my representative was struck in the same month, in the same state of fasting, by the same spirit of treachery that has worn a thousand faces but has never changed its nature.

I am the Mahdi, son of the Trustees.

I am the son of Ali, who was God’s trust on His earth.

I am the son of Husayn, who watered that trust with his blood.

I am the son of every Imam who carried it in chains, in exile, in poison, in prison.

And I am the inheritor of every servant who carried it after them — from Khomeini who revived it, to Khamenei who guarded it, to the commanders who bled for it, to the little girls in Minab who were buried beneath it before they could finish learning to read.

Do you hear me?

You who fast and pray and weep in these nights — do you understand what month this is?

This is the month in which Ali gave his blood in the mihrab of Kufa and said:

فُزْتُ وَرَبِّ الْكَعْبَةِ

“By the Lord of the Ka’bah, I have succeeded!”

And this is the month in which Sayyed Ali Khamenei — fasting, as Ali was fasting, serving, as Ali was serving, standing between the Ummah and the wolves, as Ali stood — was taken from you on the ninth night of Ramadhan, the night the Prophet lost Khadijah, the night the first mother of this Ummah departed, as if God wished to say:

The trust is being tested again. The trustees are being struck again. And the question remains the same:

Will you stand with the trust? Or will you stand with those who burn it?

I have spoken this question before — at the door of my grandmother Zahra, at the plains of my grandfather Husayn, on the road from Karbala to Damascus where my aunt Zaynab carried it in chains.

And now I speak it here, in the shadow of a mihrab stained with the blood of the first Ali, in the rubble of a nation struck for harbouring the defiance of the second, in the dust of a school where 165 of my sisters were learning the letters of a Book that was placed on spears fourteen centuries ago by the same enemy who placed missiles on their classroom in this age.

Listen well.

For I will tell you how it began — not with the sword of Ibn Muljam, but with the Qurans raised on spears at Siffin, when the enemy discovered that the surest way to destroy the faithful is not to fight them — but to confuse them.

And that confusion has never ended.

It has only changed its weapons.

The Quran on Spears: The Forge of Betrayal

Before the blade, there was the lie.

Before Ibn Muljam raised his poisoned sword in the mihrab of Kufa, Muawiyyah raised the Quran on spears at Siffin — and that was the deadlier blow.

Listen, for this is not ancient history.

This is the blueprint.

This is the method.

This is the weapon they use still.

My grandfather Ali stood at Siffin with the companions of the Prophet at his side, with truth as his banner and justice as his blade.

And Muawiyyah — the son of the liver-eater, the heir of Abu Sufyan, the man who turned Islam into empire and prophecy into dynasty — was losing.

His lines were breaking.

His soldiers were fleeing.

The sword of Ali was doing what it had always done — cutting falsehood at the root.

And then Amr ibn al-Aas — that fox of the Arabs, that merchant of schemes — whispered to his master:

“Raise the mushafs on the spears. Tell them: let the Book of God judge between us.”

And so they did.

They took the Quran — the Book they had never obeyed, the revelation they had never internalised, the words they had always used as decoration — and they raised it on the tips of their weapons.

Not in reverence.

In calculation.

And O my Shia — O you who claim to know this story — do you understand what happened next?

The army of Ali — the army of truth — stopped.

They saw paper and ink raised in the air and forgot that the living Quran stood among them.

They saw the calligraphy on parchment and were blind to the man whose life was the Quran in motion — the one the Prophet called:

عَلِيٌّ مَعَ الْقُرْآنِ وَالْقُرْآنُ مَعَ عَلِيٍّ

“Ali is with the Quran, and the Quran is with Ali — they shall never separate until they meet me at the Hawd.”

— Al-Hakim al-Naysaburi, al-Mustadrak ala al-Sahihayn
— Al-Suyuti, al-Jami’ al-Saghir

They had the speaking Quran before their eyes, and they chose the silent one on the spear.

Ali warned them. He told them:

أَنَا أَمْسِ كُنْتُ أَمِيرًا فَأَصْبَحْتُ الْيَوْمَ مَأْمُورًا

“Yesterday I was the commander. Today I have become the commanded.”

— Nahj al-Balagha, Sermon 208 (Khutba al-Shiqshiqiyya context)

He saw the trap.

He named the trap.

But the war-weary, the weak-faithed, the men who loved comfort more than truth — they forced his hand.

“Accept the arbitration,” they demanded. “Let the Quran decide,” they shouted — as if the Quran had not already decided when it named Ali at Ghadeer, when it purified him in the Verse of Purification, when it made him the soul of the Prophet at Mubahala.

And so my grandfather — out of mercy for their weakness — accepted.

Not because he was deceived.

But because the shepherd does not abandon the flock even when the flock runs toward the wolf.

And what was the fruit of that deception?

The Khawarij.

Born not from the enemies of Islam, but from its own ranks.

Born not from ignorance of the Quran, but from a false fixation upon it.

Born from men who prayed more than you, who fasted more than you, who recited more beautifully than you — but who understood nothing.

My grandfather said of them:

كَلِمَةُ حَقٍّ يُرَادُ بِهَا بَاطِلٌ

“A word of truth behind which falsehood is intended.”

— Nahj al-Balagha, Sermon 40

A word of truth — behind which falsehood is intended.

Burn this into your hearts.

For this is the formula that has never changed.

When Muawiyyah raised the Quran on spears, he invented the method every empire has used since:

Use the language of the people against them.
Use their faith to break their faith.
Use their exhaustion to make them surrender.
Use their love of peace to make them accept injustice.

And when the confusion has done its work — when the faithful have turned on their own Imam — then send the assassin.

Then send Ibn Muljam.

The Khawarij did not know they were Muawiyyah’s weapon.

They believed — with the certainty of the deceived — that they were the righteous ones, that Ali was the deviant, that they were saving Islam by killing the greatest Muslim after the Prophet.

And so it is today.

O people of this age — do you not see the spears?

When they broadcast their wars with the language of “liberation” — that is the Quran on spears.

When they sanction a nation into starvation and call it “pressure for peace” — that is the Quran on spears.

When they arm one Muslim against another and call it “supporting democracy” — that is the Quran on spears.

When they fund the MEK — those Khawarij of our century — who murdered Shaheed Beheshti and seventy-two of the faithful in a single blast, who assassinated Shaheed Bahonar and Shaheed Rajai, who sold their souls to Saddam and then to Washington — and then parade them in European parliaments as “the democratic alternative” — that is the Quran on spears.

And now — now they come for the Kurds.

O children of Salah al-Din —
O honourable people of the mountains —
I speak to you not as a stranger but as the son of Ali, who is the Imam of all believers, Sunni and Shia alike.

The one they murdered — Sayyed Ali Khamenei — do you know what he said of you?

He stood before the world and honoured your Peshmerga martyrs — the brave young Kurds who joined the Sacred Defense, who fought not only the enemy at the border but the threats within their own cities, who risked their families so that the honour of Iran — all of Iran — would not fall.

He said:

“The young individuals from the Muslim Kurdish Peshmerga valiantly joined the war fronts, risked their lives and the peace of their families. They knew what hardship awaited them, yet they fought: this is very significant.”

He counted fifteen thousand Sunni martyrs of the Sacred Defense — your sons, your fathers, your brothers — and he wept for them as he wept for his own.

And now the empire that murdered him turns to you and says:

“Come. Be our allies. We will give you what Iran never gave you.”

Do you not recognise the voice?

It is the voice of Muawiyyah at Siffin.

It is the voice that says: “Let the Quran decide” — while holding the Quran on a spear dripping with Muslim blood.

It is the same voice that spoke to the Kurds in Afrin and said: We stand with you” — then watched as Turkey drove you from your homes.

The same voice that armed the Kurds in Rojava and said: “We are your partners” — then pulled away overnight and left you to the slaughter.

The same voice that promised the Kurds of Iraq a state — then used that promise to fracture the very nations that had sheltered you for centuries.

I say to the honourable Kurds — and I say it as the son of Ali, in whom there is no Sunni and no Shia, only truth and falsehood:

Do not become the Khawarij of this age.

Do not let them place you at the door of Iran as they placed Ibn Muljam at the door of the mosque.

For Ibn Muljam thought he was serving God.

And he served only Muawiyyah.

The Khawarij thought they were purifying Islam.

And they only orphaned it.

Your honour is with the resistance, not with the empire.

Your history is with the mountains, not with the mercenaries.

Your martyrs — your fifteen thousand — did not die so that their grandchildren would carry water for the children of Abu Sufyan.

The trap is the same.

The spear is the same.

Only the Quran they raise upon it has changed — now it is called “freedom,” now it is called “democracy,” now it is called “regime change.”

But the blade beneath it is still aimed at the mihrab.

Still aimed at the man who prays.

Still aimed at Ali.

The Night of the Nineteenth: The Sword and the Sajdah

Now I will tell you of a night that the angels have never stopped weeping for.

A night in the month of God, when heaven was open, when mercy was descending like rain upon the earth, and the greatest worshipper alive knelt to receive it — and received instead a sword.

It was the nineteenth of Ramadhan.

My grandfather had been fasting — as he had fasted every day of this sacred month, as he had fasted through poverty when others feasted, as he had fasted through war when others rested, as he had fasted through betrayal when the Ummah he served starved him of loyalty and gorged itself on the wealth of his enemies.

That evening, he broke his fast with three morsels of barley bread, a cup of milk, and salt.

His daughter Umm Kulthum placed more before him.

He pushed it away.

“Daughter, would you have your father meet his Lord with a full stomach? There are only two more nights between me and your brother — the Messenger of God.”

— Al-Majlisi, Bihar al-Anwar, Volume 42

She did not understand — not yet.

But the geese knew.

When he rose for the mosque that night, the geese in the courtyard cried out — fluttering, wailing, blocking his path as if they could hold back what God had decreed.

Umm Kulthum said:

“Father, the birds cry as if in mourning.”

And Ali — my grandfather, the man who had never feared a single creature that walked or flew or crawled upon this earth — Ali, the Lion of God, who had split Marhab at Khaybar and held the gate of the fortress in one hand — this Ali looked at the birds and said:

يَا بُنَيَّةِ، مَا مِنْ أَحَدٍ إِلاَّ وَلَهُ مِنَ اللَّهِ حَافِظٌ، فَإِذَا جَاءَ الْقَدَرُ خَلَّى عَنْهُ، وَهَذِهِ الطُّيُورُ تَنْعَانِي

“My daughter, there is no one but that God has appointed for him a guardian. But when the decree comes, the guardian steps aside. And these birds — they mourn for me.”

— Al-Majlisi, Bihar al-Anwar, Volume 42, Chapter on the Martyrdom of Amir al-Mu’minin

He knew.

Let that truth settle in your bones:

He knew.

He knew as he walked to the mosque.

He knew as he called the adhan.

He knew as he straightened the rows of the sleeping worshippers, gently tapping their shoulders:

الصَّلاةَ الصَّلاةَ

“The prayer, the prayer!”

— waking them for what would be his last fajr, rousing them to stand before God while he prepared to stand before God in a different way entirely.

He knew, and he went anyway.

This is the courage you have never understood.

Not the courage of the battlefield — he had exhausted that at Badr, at Uhud, at Khandaq, at Khaybar, at Hunayn.

This is the courage of the mihrab.

The courage of the man who knows the sword is coming and chooses the prayer mat over the shield.

The courage of the fasting man who will not break his appointment with his Lord even though death has already made its appointment with him.

O my Shia — when you fear to speak truth because it may cost you your employment, remember: Ali walked to a sword to keep his appointment with the fajr prayer.

When you hesitate to stand for justice because the consequences frighten you, remember: the Lion of God did not hesitate, and he was walking toward a poisoned blade.

He entered the mosque of Kufa.

The night was quiet.

The stars were watching.

The Quran hung in the air like breath before a cry.

He stood before his Lord.

He raised his hands.

اللَّهُ أَكْبَرُ

God is the Greatest

And then —

In the depths of the sajdah — in that moment when the forehead of the greatest man after the Prophet touched the earth in submission to the Lord of the worlds — in that holy instant when heaven and earth meet through the prostration of the righteous —

the blade fell.

Ibn Muljam — that wretched product of the confusion sown at Siffin, that creature forged in the furnace of Muawiyyah’s deception — struck the crown of the man upon whose shoulders the Prophet had stood to smash the idols of the Ka’bah.

The poisoned sword split the blessed head — from the crown to the bridge of the nose — at the very place where the dust of sajdah had gathered from a lifetime of prostration.

The mark of prayer became the path of the sword.

Let me say that again, so that it enters your soul and never leaves:

The mark of prayer became the path of the sword.

They struck him where he bowed to God.

They struck him in the state God loves most.

They struck him while he was fasting, while he was praying, while his tongue was moist with the name of God.

And what did he say?

Did he cry out in pain?

Did he call for vengeance?

Did he curse the hand that struck him?

He said:

فُزْتُ وَرَبِّ الْكَعْبَةِ

“By the Lord of the Ka’bah — I have succeeded!”

— Narrated in multiple sources including: Al-Muttaqi al-Hindi, Kanz al-Ummal Al-Majlisi, Bihar al-Anwar, Volume 42 Ibn Abi al-Hadid, Sharh Nahj al-Balagha

Succeeded.

Not

Not

Not

Succeeded.

Because for Ali, death in the mihrab was not defeat — it was graduation.

Death in sajdah was not tragedy — it was the highest station a servant could ask for.

To be taken by God while prostrating to God, while fasting for God, while calling others to God —

what victory could be greater?

What empire could match it?

What throne on earth could compare to the throne that was being prepared for him at the moment the blade fell?

O people who fear death — Ali welcomed it.

O people who worship comfort — Ali broke his fast with three morsels and walked joyfully to a sword.

O people who mourn him — he told you not to grieve, for he had reached what he was always reaching for:

the face of his Lord.

And the blood — the blood that flowed from the crown of his head pooled on the prayer mat of the mosque of Kufa and seeped into the earth and the earth has never forgotten.

The doors of the mosque flew open of their own accord.

A black wind — dark, violent, howling — swept through Kufa.

The angels cried out in the heavens.

And Jibrael (Gabriel) — the same Jibrael (Gabriel) who had brought the first word of revelation to Muhammad, who had stood at the threshold of Fatimah’s house in reverence, who had wept at Karbala before Karbala had yet occurred —

Jibrael (Gabriel) called out between the heavens and the earth in a voice heard by every waking soul:

تَهَدَّمَتْ وَاللَّهِ أَرْكَانُ الْهُدَى وَانْطَمَسَتْ وَاللَّهِ نُجُومُ السَّمَاءِ وَأَعْلَامُ التُّقَى وَانْفَصَمَتْ وَاللَّهِ الْعُرْوَةُ الْوُثْقَى قُتِلَ ابْنُ عَمِّ الْمُصْطَفَى قُتِلَ الْوَصِيُّ الْمُجْتَبَى قُتِلَ عَلِيٌّ الْمُرْتَضَى قُتِلَ وَاللَّهِ سَيِّدُ الْأَوْصِيَاءِ قَتَلَهُ أَشْقَى الْأَشْقِيَاءِ

“By God, the pillars of guidance have been destroyed! By God, the stars of the heavens and the banners of piety have been obliterated! By God, the firmest handle has been severed! The cousin of al-Mustafa has been killed! The chosen successor has been killed! Ali al-Murtada has been killed! By God, the master of all successors has been killed — killed by the most wretched of the wretched!”

— Al-Majlisi, Bihar al-Anwar, Volume 42, Page 279

And Umm Kulthum heard the cry of Jibrael and struck her face and wailed:

“O my father! O Ali!”

And in Madinah, Husayn — my grandfather — felt the blow in his chest before any messenger arrived.

He turned to his brother Hassan and said:

And Hassan wept — because he knew that the door his mother had held shut had finally been broken open from within.

The first Ali fell in the mihrab.

And fourteen centuries later — on the ninth night of this same blessed month, the night the Prophet lost Khadijah, the night mercy itself was orphaned —

the second Ali fell.

Not in a mihrab of brick and clay, but in the mihrab of a nation — the Islamic Republic that was itself a prayer, a forty-seven-year sajdah in defiance of every empire that demanded Iran lift its head from the ground.

Sayyed Ali Khamenei was fasting. As Ali was fasting.

Sayyed Ali Khamenei was serving the Ummah. As Ali was serving the Ummah.

Sayyed Ali Khamenei had spent his life waking the sleeping, straightening the rows, calling out:

The prayer, the prayer!
The resistance, the resistance!
The justice, the justice!

And they struck him as they struck Ali — not in a moment of weakness, but in a moment of worship.

Not on a battlefield, but in the sanctuary of his duty.

And I say to you — if Ali said “I have succeeded” when the blade split his blessed head, then what do you think Sayyed Ali said when the missiles split the sky above Tehran?

Do you think the man who lived on bread and raisins feared fire from the sky?

Do you think the man whose arm was paralysed for God at Abu Dhar trembled when the final blow came?

Do you think the servant who had told his doctors forty-five years before — “If this is for God, then it is sweet” — found the taste of martyrdom bitter?

He succeeded.

As Ali succeeded.

And the proof of his success is that the same empire that killed him is already afraid of what his death has awakened.

But the nights between the sword and the departure are not yet told.

And what Ali said in those final hours — what he whispered to Hassan, to Husayn, what he commanded about justice, even justice for his own killer —

that is the sermon the world refuses to learn.

And that is what I will tell you next.

The Testament Between Two Worlds: The Wasiyyah of the Dying Imam

Two days.

Between the sword and the soul’s flight, God gave Ali two days.

Not for himself — he had never lived for himself.

But for you.

For the Ummah that had failed him, for the sons who would inherit his wounds, for the centuries that would claim his name while betraying his way.

Two days to teach what a lifetime of sermons had not yet sealed into your hearts.

He lay in his house, the poison spreading from his skull through the body that had carried Islam on its shoulders since childhood.

The same body that had slept in the Prophet’s bed so the Prophet could escape to Madinah.

The same body that had held the gate of Khaybar in one hand.

The same body that had never bowed to anyone but God.

Now it lay broken — not by an army, not by a worthy opponent, but by a wretch in a mosque, a product of the confusion that cowardice and deception had sown.

And yet — even now — Ali was not finished teaching.

He turned to Hassan and Husayn — my forefathers, the two masters of the youth of Paradise — and he spoke.

Not as a dying man speaks — with panic, with regret, with bitterness.

But as a prophet speaks to his inheritors.

As a father speaks to the future.

As truth speaks to the ages.

He said:

أُوصِيكُمَا بِتَقْوَى اللَّهِ وَأَنْ لَا تَبْغِيَا الدُّنْيَا وَإِنْ بَغَتْكُمَا وَلَا تَأْسَفَا عَلَى شَيْءٍ مِنْهَا زُوِيَ عَنْكُمَا وَقُولَا بِالْحَقِّ وَاعْمَلَا لِلْأَجْرِ وَكُونَا لِلظَّالِمِ خَصْمًا وَلِلْمَظْلُومِ عَوْنًا

“I counsel you both to be conscious of God, and not to chase this world even if it chases you, and not to grieve over anything of it that is kept from you. Speak the truth and act for the reward of the Hereafter. Be an adversary to the oppressor and a helper to the oppressed.”

— Nahj al-Balagha, Letter 47

Be an adversary to the oppressor.

Be a helper to the oppressed.

Not: be safe.

Not: be comfortable.

Not: be diplomatic.

Not: seek a balanced position between the tyrant and his victim.

An adversary to the oppressor.

A helper to the oppressed.

This was not advice.

This was a commandment from a dying Imam with the poison of Ibn Muljam in his veins — and it echoes across every age into every ear that claims to follow Ali but follows instead the path of ease.

Then he said:

اعْمَلَا لِلدُّنْيَا كَأَنَّكُمَا تَعِيشَانِ أَبَدًا وَاعْمَلَا لِلْآخِرَةِ كَأَنَّكُمَا تَمُوتَانِ غَدًا

“Work for this world as if you will live forever, and work for the Hereafter as if you will die tomorrow.”

— Nahj al-Balagha, Letter 47

Do you hear?

Work for this world — as if you will live forever.

Ali, on his deathbed, did not tell his sons to abandon the world.

He did not say: retreat into your prayers and wait for paradise.

He said: build.

Build justice.

Build institutions.

Build resistance.

Build as if the work will never end — because it will not end until I return.

And work for the Hereafter — as if you will die tomorrow.

Because you might.

Because Husayn would — at Karbala.

Because Hassan would — by poison.

Because every Imam after them would be given the choice between compromise and martyrdom, and every one of them chose martyrdom.

And then — then came the instruction that separates the house of Ali from every house of power the world has ever known.

He looked at his sons — the sons whose father was dying because of the blade of Ibn Muljam — and he said:

يَا بَنِي عَبْدِ الْمُطَّلِبِ لَا أُلْفِيَنَّكُمْ تَخُوضُونَ دِمَاءَ الْمُسْلِمِينَ خَوْضًا تَقُولُونَ: قُتِلَ أَمِيرُ الْمُؤْمِنِينَ أَلَا لَا يُقْتَلَنَّ بِي إِلَّا قَاتِلِي اُنْظُرُوا إِذَا أَنَا مِتُّ مِنْ ضَرْبَتِهِ هَذِهِ فَاضْرِبُوهُ ضَرْبَةً بِضَرْبَةٍ وَلَا تُمَثِّلُوا بِالرَّجُلِ فَإِنِّي سَمِعْتُ رَسُولَ اللَّهِ صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَآلِهِ يَقُولُ إِيَّاكُمْ وَالْمُثْلَةَ وَلَوْ بِالْكَلْبِ الْعَقُورِ

“O sons of Abd al-Muttalib! Let me not find you plunging into the blood of Muslims, crying: ‘The Commander of the Faithful has been killed!’ No! Let none be killed for me except my killer alone. Wait — if I die from this blow of his, then strike him one strike for one strike. And do not mutilate the man. For I heard the Messenger of God — peace and blessings be upon him and his family — say: ‘Beware of mutilation, even of a rabid dog.’”

— Nahj al-Balagha, Letter 47
— Al-Majlisi, Bihar al-Anwar, Volume 42

One strike for one strike.

The man who killed him — the most wretched of the wretched — and Ali commands:

Do not exceed justice.
Do not become what you fight.
Do not let my blood make you into monsters.

One strike for one strike.

Not ten.

Not a hundred.

Not a massacre.

Not collective punishment.

Not the levelling of cities.

Not the bombing of schools.

Not the starvation of nations.

One strike for one strike — and do not mutilate even a rabid dog.

O leaders of this world — O you who carpet-bomb in the name of “self-defence” — O you who starve millions and call it “sanctions” — O you who erase entire bloodlines and call it “targeted operations” —

Here is your teacher.

He is dying.

His skull is split by poison.

His killer is in your custody.

He has every right — by any law of any civilisation — to demand vengeance.

And he says:

One strike for one strike. And do not mutilate the man.

This is Ali.

This is the Islam they never taught you.

This is the justice they never practised.

This is the standard they could never reach — so they killed the one who set it.

And he continued — for even on his deathbed, Ali thought of others before himself.

He said to Hassan:

أُطْعِمُوهُ مِمَّا تَأْكُلُونَ وَاسْقُوهُ مِمَّا تَشْرَبُونَ

“Feed him from what you eat, and give him to drink from what you drink.”

— Al-Majlisi, Bihar al-Anwar, Volume 42

Feed the killer from your own food.

Give the assassin your own water.

While the poison of his blade courses through your father’s body — feed him.

This is not weakness.

This is the apex of power.

This is a man so certain of his Lord, so rooted in the justice of God, so far beyond the petty cycles of revenge and cruelty that he legislates mercy for the hand that destroyed him.

Show me one empire that has done this.

Show me one president, one prime minister, one king who, with his dying breath, commanded his children to feed his assassin.

You will not find one.

Because this is not the way of the world.

This is the way of Ali.

And the distance between those two ways is the distance between every war crime committed in this age and the justice that my return will bring.

Then Ali spoke his final counsel — words that should be inscribed on the walls of every mosque, every parliament, every school, every home:

اللَّهَ اللَّهَ فِي الْأَيْتَامِ فَلَا تُغِبُّوا أَفْوَاهَهُمْ وَلَا يَضِيعُوا بِحَضْرَتِكُمْ

“God, God — remember God in the matter of orphans. Do not let their mouths go unfed. Do not let them perish in your presence.”

— Nahj al-Balagha, Letter 47

God, God — in the matter of orphans.

This — from the man who was himself about to orphan his children.

This — from the dying father who knew that Hassan would be poisoned, that Husayn would be slaughtered, that Zaynab would be chained, that his grandchildren would be orphans upon orphans upon orphans unto me — the final orphan, the hidden one, the one who carries the grief of every fatherless child from that day to this.

And still — still — his last concern was:

O people of this Ummah — how many orphans have you made since that night?

How many children in Gaza tonight are crying for fathers buried beneath rubble?

How many daughters in Minab will never hear their fathers call their names?

How many sons in Lebanon, in Yemen, in Iraq eat from the tables of strangers because the empire that killed Ali’s way killed their families too?

Ali said:

And you have let them perish not only in your presence — but on your screens, before your eyes, in your news feeds, between your meals.

Then came the night of the twenty-first.

The poison had done its work.

The body was yielding.

But the soul — the soul of Ali was eager.

He had told them:

And now the second night had come.

He made his final ablution.

He prayed his final prayer.

He turned to his sons one last time.

And the man who had entered this world inside the Ka’bah — born within the house of God, the only human being ever granted that honour — now prepared to leave this world in the state he had entered it:

In complete submission.

His lips moved with the shahadah.

His heart moved with the love of Muhammad.

His soul moved toward the Lord who had sent him as a mercy that the world refused.

And Ali ibn Abi Talib — Amin Allah fi ardhih, the Trustee of God on His earth, the Commander of the Faithful, the husband of Zahra, the father of Hassan and Husayn, the gate of the city of knowledge, the self of the Prophet at Mubahala, the hand of God at Khaybar, the voice of justice at Kufa, the Lion, the Saint, the Martyr —

returned to his Lord on the twenty-first night of Ramadhan, in the fortieth year after Hijra, at the age of sixty-three — the same age at which the Prophet departed.

As if God wished to say:

And Hassan and Husayn washed his body with their tears.

And they buried him in the silence of the night, in a grave whose location they concealed — as Fatimah’s grave was concealed — because the enemies of God could not be trusted even with the dead.

And the earth of Najaf received him.

And the earth has been holy ever since.

And I — I who know where every hidden grave lies, I who visit them in the watches of the night — I stood at that grave before the shrine was built, before the dome was raised, before the millions came —

and I said:

And now I must speak of the long river of blood that flows from that mihrab to this very night.

For the sword that struck Ali has never been sheathed.

It has only changed hands.

The Sword That Never Rested: A Ledger of Blood from the Mihrab to Minab

I told you the sword has never been sheathed.

Now let me show you its path.

For I have watched it pass from hand to hand, century to century, empire to empire — and the blood on its edge has never dried.

They killed Ali in the mihrab and thought the matter was settled.

But Ali’s blood became Husayn’s stand.

And Husayn’s blood became Zaynab’s sermon.

And Zaynab’s sermon became a flame that no empire has ever succeeded in extinguishing — though God knows they have tried.

Listen now — for I will name what I have witnessed, and every name is a scar upon my heart.

They began with the land.

In 1948, they tore Palestine from its people and called the theft a “state” — built on the bones of villages erased, on the keys of homes whose owners still remember every room, on the blood of Deir Yassin where they butchered the innocent to teach the rest the price of existing.

This was the Nakba — the catastrophe — and it has never ended.

It merely changes its name each decade while the theft continues.

They moved to Iran.

In 1953, the government of Mosaddegh — a man who dared to say that the oil beneath Iranian soil belongs to the Iranian people — was overthrown by the British and the Americans in the operation they proudly named Ajax.

And in his place they installed a puppet — the Shah, that peacock on a stolen throne — who tortured with SAVAK, who bowed to Washington, who crushed every voice that whispered of justice, who banned the hijab from the daughters of Fatimah and called it “modernisation.”

And when the people rose — when Imam Khomeini revived the cry of Husayn and a nation said “No” to the empire — they punished Iran with eight years of war.

They armed Saddam.

They gave him the coordinates.

They gave him the chemicals.

And when he gassed the Kurds at Halabja — their own Kurds, the ones they now claim to champion — the world was silent.

As it is always silent when the empire’s weapons find their targets.

But Iran stood.

And the blood of the Sacred Defense — the blood of the Basiji, the blood of the Kurdish Peshmerga who fought alongside their brothers, the blood of teenagers who walked through minefields with the name of Husayn on their lips — that blood built a republic that the empire has never forgiven.

So they sent the Khawarij.

The MEK — those traitors wrapped in the flag of liberation — who planted the bomb that killed Shaheed Ayatollah Beheshti and seventy-two of the faithful in a single explosion.

Seventy-two.

The number of Karbala.

As if history itself was shouting:

They killed Shaheed Bahonar.

They killed Shaheed Rajai.

They assassinated, they bombed, they terrorised — and then they fled to the arms of Saddam, and then to the arms of Washington, and today they sit in European parliaments and are called “the democratic alternative.”

The Khawarij have always found shelter in the courts of Muawiyyah.

And the sword moved on.

It found the nuclear scientists — the minds that dared to give Iran the knowledge the empire reserves for itself.

Shaheed Majid Shahriari.

Shaheed Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan — thirty-two years old, killed by a magnetic bomb attached to his car on a Tehran morning while his wife sat beside him.

Shaheed Dariush Rezaeinejad.

And Shaheed Mohsen Fakhrizadeh — the father of Iran’s defence, assassinated by a remote-controlled machine gun operated by satellite, because the empire murders even from the sky and calls it precision.

And then the commanders.

Hajj Qassem Soleimani — the man who stood where others knelt, who fought Da’esh when the world watched, who wept at the graves of his soldiers, who carried the ring of Abulfazl al-Abbas on his finger and the love of Imam Husayn in his every breath — murdered at Baghdad Airport by an American drone strike, alongside Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the lion of Iraq, the defender of the shrines —

on the third of January 2020, while travelling under diplomatic guarantee.

They killed the guest.

As they would later kill Ismail Haniyeh — the guest of Tehran itself, the leader of Palestine, murdered in the city that had sheltered him, because for the empire, no sanctuary is sacred, no guest-right is honoured, no law applies when the target is one who says “No.”

And from Lebanon — from the land of cedars and resistance — the sword took Hajj Emad Mughniyeh, the shadow commander who made the occupation tremble.

It took Sayyed Abbas al-Musawi, whose blood watered the roots of the Resistance.

And then — in September of last year — it took Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah.

The lion of the South.

The voice that never trembled.

The man who stood before the cameras after the July War of 2006 and declared:

They dropped eighty bunker-busting bombs on the southern suburb of Beirut to silence one man.

And they did not silence him.

For his voice lives in every throat that refuses to be mute.

And from Palestine — where the sword has been unsheathed since before most of you were born —

Yahya Sinwar, who spent twenty-two years in their prisons and emerged unbroken, who chose to fight on his feet rather than surrender on his knees — killed in battle, rifle in hand, in the rubble of the land he refused to leave.

And Shaykh Ahmed Yassin — the blind, paralysed old man in a wheelchair — struck by a missile from an Apache helicopter as he was wheeled out of the fajr prayer.

Even in the mihrab.

Always in the mihrab.

The sword always finds the one who prays.

And from Iraq — the commanders who broke the back of Da’esh when the world stood paralysed — Shaheed Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, who lies beside Hajj Qassem in the garden of the martyrs.

And from the ranks of Iran’s defenders — Generals Zahedi, Hajizadeh, Salami, Bagheri, and those whose names the world does not know but whose blood God has recorded in the ledger that no power on earth can erase.

Name upon name.

Grave upon grave.

Mihrab upon mihrab.

And you ask me why I have not returned?

This is why I weep.

This is why I wait.

Not because I am weak — but because the weight of what I carry would split the earth if I set it down.

And now — now I must speak of something that even I — the son of Husayn, who has witnessed Karbala from behind the veils of time, who has counted every infant’s death, every mother’s scream, every drop of blood spilled from the first murder of Qabil (Cain) to this hour —

even I tremble to speak of it.

The Shajareh Tayyebeh school.

The Good Tree.

God says in His Book:

أَلَمْ تَرَ كَيْفَ ضَرَبَ اللَّهُ مَثَلًا كَلِمَةً طَيِّبَةً كَشَجَرَةٍ طَيِّبَةٍ أَصْلُهَا ثَابِتٌ وَفَرْعُهَا فِي السَّمَاءِ

“Have you not seen how God strikes a parable? A good word is like a good tree — its root is firm and its branches reach the sky.”

— Qur’an, Surah Ibrahim (the Chapter of Abraham) #14, Verse 24

They named a school after this verse.

A school for girls.

A school in Minab, in the south of Iran, where daughters of fishermen and farmers and soldiers sat in rows learning the letters of the Quran, learning to write their names, learning that they mattered — that God had made them and God had honoured them and God had placed them in a good tree whose roots are firm and whose branches reach the sky.

One hundred and sixty-five souls.

Girls.

Seven years old.

Eight.

Nine.

Ten.

Eleven.

Twelve.

And their teachers — women who came each morning to plant seeds in the garden of God.

It was a Saturday morning.

The ninth day of Ramadhan.

The same day they killed Imam Khamenei.

The missiles came while they were in class.

The first strike collapsed the building.

Then — as the survivors crawled toward the prayer hall, as the teachers gathered the wounded, as the principal called the parents and said

the second missile came.

A double strike.

As at Karbala — where they first killed the men, then looted the tents of the women and children.

The second missile struck the prayer hall.

Where they had taken shelter.

Where they thought the walls might hold.

Where a teacher had told them:

And God did receive them.

But not as the teacher had hoped.

He received them as martyrs.

One hundred and sixty-five Mohsins — not yet born into the fullness of their lives, crushed as Mohsin was crushed behind the door of Fatimah.

The rescuers found bodies without heads.

Bodies without hands.

Bodies without legs.

They found backpacks.

Pink and purple and blue — with cartoon characters on the zippers and lunch boxes inside that their mothers had packed that morning, not knowing they were packing a last meal for a martyr.

They found sixty-nine children so destroyed that they could not be identified. Their remains are undergoing DNA testing — because the missiles did to their bodies what the empire wishes to do to their memory:

obliterate it beyond recognition.

But I recognise them.

I know every name.

I know every face.

I know which girl sat by the window and which one always raised her hand first and which one was afraid of the dark and which one had just memorised her first surah and which one had written a letter to her grandmother that will never be delivered.

I know them because they are my sisters.

They are the daughters of Fatimah.

They are the branches of the good tree.

And the good tree was not uprooted.

It was struck from the sky by the same hands that raised the Quran on spears at Siffin — the hands that use the language of freedom to deliver the grammar of annihilation.

And I say to the one who ordered the strike, and to the one who provided the coordinates, and to the one who flew the jet, and to the one who pressed the button, and to the one who signed the authorisation, and to every journalist who called it “collateral damage,” and to every politician who said “we are investigating,” and to every soul that scrolled past their photographs and moved on to the next piece of entertainment:

God has recorded your names in a ledger that will be opened on a day when no investigation can be delayed, no responsibility can be deflected, no statement of “deep concern” will suffice.

وَلَا تَحْسَبَنَّ اللَّهَ غَافِلًا عَمَّا يَعْمَلُ الظَّالِمُونَ إِنَّمَا يُؤَخِّرُهُمْ لِيَوْمٍ تَشْخَصُ فِيهِ الْأَبْصَارُ

“And do not think that God is unaware of what the oppressors do. He only delays them to a Day when eyes will stare in horror.”

— Qur’an, Surah Ibrahim (the Chapter of Abraham) #14, Verse 42

From the same Surah.

The Surah of the Good Tree.

And the Surah of the reckoning of the oppressors.

God placed them side by side in His Book so that you would understand:

The one who strikes the good tree has an appointment with the One who planted it.

And now — from the mihrab of Ali to the classroom of Minab, from the seventy-two of Karbala to the seventy-two of Beheshti, from the poisoned blade of Ibn Muljam to the precision missiles of the empire, from the Quran raised on spears at Siffin to the “freedom” raised on bombs over Tehran —

the ledger is complete.

The names are written.

The blood has spoken.

And the sword that struck Ali in the mihrab has finally revealed its full reach — from the mosque to the school, from the prayer mat to the classroom mat, from the prostrating Imam to the studying child.

They strike wherever God is remembered.

They strike wherever truth is taught.

They strike wherever a soul bows or a mind opens or a heart refuses to kneel to anyone but God.

And they call it self-defence.

And they call it security.

And they call it the rules-based order.

But I call it by its true name:

It is the continuation of Siffin.

It is the children of Muawiyyah finishing what their father began.

And I — the son of Ali, the heir of Husayn, the keeper of this ledger —

I have not lost a single name.

The Indictment: The Trial of the Living

Now I turn from the dead to the living.

For the dead have fulfilled their covenant.

The dead have nothing left to answer for.

It is you — the living — who stand before me now.

And I do not come gently.

I have spoken gently before — at the door of Zahra, at the plains of Karbala, on the road to Damascus.

I have whispered.

I have wept.

I have pleaded.

And still the Ummah sleeps while its children are slaughtered, still the pulpits echo with empty grief while the gravediggers work overtime, still the scholars debate while the bombs fall, still the leaders calculate while the orphans multiply.

So now I speak as Ali spoke — not with the tenderness of the father, but with the sword of the judge.

To the Scholars Who Guard Their Silence Like Gold

You who have spent decades mastering the intricacies of jurisprudence — tell me: what is the ruling on silence when a school full of girls is struck by two missiles?

What is the fatwa on “neutrality” when the Wali al-Faqih is assassinated while fasting in the month of God?

What is the hukm on “both sides” when one side has Apache helicopters and the other side has backpacks with cartoon zippers?

You can tell me the precise measurement of water for wudhu, but you cannot tell your congregations the name of a single child killed in Minab.

You can parse the grammar of a thousand hadith, but you cannot construct a single sentence of condemnation that names the killer by name.

You have memorised the wasiyyah of Ali —

— and you have turned it into calligraphy on your walls while turning your backs on every oppressed soul who begged you to live it.

Ali fed his killer from his own plate.

You cannot even feed the truth to your own congregations.

Ali commanded justice for Ibn Muljam.

You cannot command your own tongues to speak justice for Palestine.

What happened to you?

When did the turbans become so heavy that they bent your necks away from the direction of truth?

When did the robes become so comfortable that you forgot they are supposed to be worn in the dust of resistance, not in the velvet of diplomacy?

My grandfather Ali said:

مَا أَخَذَ اللَّهُ عَلَى الْعُلَمَاءِ أَنْ لَا يُقَارُّوا عَلَى كِظَّةِ ظَالِمٍ وَلَا سَغَبِ مَظْلُومٍ

“God took a covenant from the scholars that they shall not stay silent over the gluttony of the oppressor nor the hunger of the oppressed.”

— Nahj al-Balagha, Sermon 3 (Khutba al-Shiqshiqiyya)

That covenant is not a suggestion.

It is not a recommendation.

It is not subject to diplomatic convenience.

It is a covenant with God.

And every scholar who has broken it will stand before Ali on the Day of Judgement and Ali will say:

To the Leaders Who Trade in Muslim Blood

You who call yourselves “Custodians of the Two Holy Mosques” — what have you custodied while Al-Aqsa is desecrated daily?

What have you guarded while the Zionist entity builds settlements on the bones of Palestinian villages?

You opened your airspace for the missiles that killed Sayyed Ali Khamenei.

Let that sentence rest in the room.

You — who claim the mantle of Islam — opened your skies so that the enemies of Islam could assassinate the leader of the only state on earth that stood, with all its flaws and all its trials, as a fortress for the oppressed.

You normalised with the killers of Gaza. You shook hands with the architects of the Nakba. You signed accords while the blood was still wet. You smiled for the cameras while behind you the children of Shu’ayb and Ibrahim and Isma’il were being erased from the map and from memory.

And you think I do not see?

I see the gold on your wrists and the blood beneath it.

I see the marble in your palaces and the bones beneath it.

I see the treaties on your desks and the betrayal within them.

Ali lived in a house of clay and ruled an empire with justice.

You live in palaces of marble and cannot rule your own conscience.

To the Preachers Who Perform Grief for Profit

You stand on the minbar every Ramadhan and narrate the martyrdom of Ali with professional tears and practiced pauses.

You describe the mihrab.

You describe the blade.

You describe the blood.

And the congregation weeps on cue, and the donations flow on cue, and the session ends on cue, and everyone goes home feeling cleansed — without having changed a single thing.

You have turned the maqtal into anaesthesia.

You use the pain of Ali to numb the conscience of the Ummah — so that they weep for an hour and sleep for a year.

You narrate

but you have never asked your audience:

You curse Ibn Muljam — but you dine with those who manufacture the modern swords that strike the modern mihrabs.

You lament the Khawarij — but you cannot identify the Khawarij of your own age, because identifying them would require you to offend the powers that fund your platforms.

Your majalis have become what the Quran on spears at Siffin was — the appearance of religion used to neutralise the substance of religion.

And I say to you what Ali said to the Khawarij:

كَلِمَةُ حَقٍّ يُرَادُ بِهَا بَاطِلٌ

“A word of truth behind which falsehood is intended.”

Your tears are real.

But their purpose has become false.

For if your tears were true, they would become action.

If your grief were sincere, it would become resistance.

If your love for Ali were genuine, you would live his wasiyyah — not merely recite it.

To the Ummah That Watches and Scrolls

And finally — I speak to you.

Not the scholars.

Not the leaders.

Not the preachers.

You.

The one listening to this maqtal right now.

The one who will weep tonight and check the news tomorrow and see the death toll rise and feel a pang — a small, manageable pang — and then scroll past.

I speak to you because you are the majority.

You are the ocean in which the scholars swim, the ground on which the leaders stand, the air the preachers breathe.

If you moved — they would move.

If you demanded — they would comply.

If you rose — the thrones would tremble.

But you have chosen comfort.

You have chosen the comfort of mourning over the discomfort of action.

You have chosen to feel sad about Gaza rather than to do anything about Gaza.

You have chosen to share a post about Minab and call it solidarity.

You have chosen to say

and believe that the sentence absolves you of everything that should follow it.

It does not.

is not a full stop.

It is a beginning.

It means: if we belong to God, then we must act as God’s servants.

It means: if we return to Him, then we will be asked what we did with the time between the belonging and the returning.

Ali did not say “I have succeeded” so that you could say “How moving” and return to your life unchanged.

He said it so that you would understand that success is not comfort — it is sacrifice.

That success is not safety — it is standing where truth demands you stand, even if it costs you everything.

What has it cost you?

What has your love of Ali actually cost you?

If the answer is nothing — then I say to you what I have said before, and what I will say until the mountains crumble:

You are not waiting for me.

You are hiding from me.

For when I come, I will not ask how beautifully you wept.

I will ask how bravely you stood.

I will not ask how many maqatil you attended.

I will ask how many doors you defended.

I will not ask whether you memorised the wasiyyah of Ali.

I will ask whether you lived it.

And the distance between your tears and your actions — that distance is the measure of your trial.

And it is the measure of mine.

The Covenant of the Hidden Son: The Promise of Return

And now — after the blood, after the names, after the ledger that stretches from the mihrab of Kufa to the classroom of Minab —

I speak to you not as a judge, but as a son.

A son who has lost more than any soul should carry.

A son whose grandmother was crushed behind a door.

Whose grandfather was slaughtered at noon.

Whose aunt was dragged in chains through empires.

Whose fathers — all eleven of them — were poisoned, imprisoned, exiled, or murdered for the crime of being the proof of God in an age that preferred its own darkness.

And whose representative — whose Ali of this age — was struck from the sky while fasting in the month of God, on the night the Prophet lost Khadijah, as if the heavens themselves were saying:

I am tired.

Let me say that — for I have never said it in these maqatil before.

I am tired.

Not of waiting — for my patience is from the patience of God, and God does not tire.

But I am tired of watching.

Tired of watching the daughters of Fatimah pulled from rubble in every generation.

Tired of watching the sons of Ali struck in every mihrab the empire can reach.

Tired of watching the children of Husayn memorise the Quran in schools that become their graves.

Tired of watching you weep and then sleep.

Tired of watching you march and then stop.

Tired of watching you rise for one hour of mourning and kneel for a lifetime of silence.

And yet — and yet — I do not despair.

For God has not despaired of you.

And if the Lord of the worlds still sends the rain upon the earth that buries His saints — then who am I to withhold my mercy from the Ummah that buries its conscience?

So I make my vow.

Not upon the throne of power — I have no throne.

Not upon the armies of heaven — though they await my command.

I make my vow upon the hidden grave of Ali, upon the hidden grave of Fatimah, upon the blood of Husayn that the earth of Karbala still holds, upon the chains of Zaynab that still rattle in the corridors of every court of power, upon the prayer mat of Kufa that still carries the stain of the purest blood ever spilled in sajdah.

I make my vow upon the bread and raisins of Sayyed Ali Khamenei’s childhood, upon the paralysed arm he offered to God at Abu Dhar and never asked to be returned, upon his final fast — the fast he began knowing that the wolves were circling, that the sky was darkening, that the empire had marked him — and he did not flee, as Ali did not flee, as Husayn did not flee, as no trustee of God has ever fled from the appointment their Lord has written for them.

I make my vow upon the last breath of Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah beneath eighty bombs — who did not beg, who did not bargain, who did not bend, who departed as he had lived: a son of Karbala in a suburb of Beirut.

And I make my vow upon the backpacks of Minab.

Upon the pink ones and the purple ones and the blue ones.

Upon the lunch boxes that mothers packed at dawn not knowing they were preparing the last meal of a shaheedah.

Upon the prayer hall where the teacher said “Pray, girls” — and the second missile answered.

Upon all of this, I vow:

I will return.

I will return not as the world expects — not as a politician, not as a diplomat, not as a reformer who negotiates with oppression and calls it progress.

I will return as Ali returned to the battlefield — with justice in one hand and mercy in the other, and the line between them sharper than any sword.

I will return and I will stand in the mosque of Kufa — the same mosque, the same mihrab, the same ground where my grandfather’s blood seeped into the earth —

and I will pray the fajr that was interrupted.

I will complete the sajdah that the blade of Ibn Muljam cut short.

And then I will rise from that sajdah and I will look out upon a world that has been waiting fourteen centuries for the prayer to be completed —

and I will complete it.

Not with words alone.

With the justice Ali legislated from his deathbed.

With the proportionality he commanded: one strike for one strike, and do not mutilate.

With the mercy he demonstrated: feed my killer from your own food.

With the priorities he set with his dying breath: God, God — in the matter of orphans.

Every orphan of Gaza will find a father.

Every widow of Lebanon will find a protector.

Every daughter of Minab will be raised from the dust and told:

And every Fadak will be restored.

And every stolen inheritance will be returned.

And every hidden grave will be found and honoured and kissed by the Ummah that finally understood what it had lost.

And I will find Ali’s grave — I who have always known where it lies — and I will kneel there and I will say:

But until that dawn —

until God gives the permission and the hearts are ready and the 313 have gathered —

I leave you with this:

Do not wait for me in stillness.

Wait for me in motion.

Do not wait for me in silence.

Wait for me in clarification — in tabyeen — in the speaking of truth that Zaynab spoke in the court of Yazid and Sajjad spoke in the court of Ibn Ziyad and Sayyed Hassan spoke before the cameras of the world and Imam Khamenei spoke for forty-six years from a republic built on the foundations of the mihrab they tried to destroy.

Every one of you who stands at a door today — stands with Fatimah.

Every one of you who speaks truth in a mosque today — continues the sermon of Ali.

Every one of you who refuses to let murder be normalised — keeps the covenant of Husayn.

Every one of you who protects a child — fulfils the wasiyyah.

Every one of you who says “No” to the empire, to the tyrant, to the Muawiyyah of your age, to the Khawarij of your generation, to the Shimr of your neighbourhood, to the silence of your own heart —

you are not merely waiting for me.

You are preparing the ground upon which I will place my feet.

And I swear by the Lord of Ali, by the Lord of the Ka’bah, by the Lord who split the sea for Musa (Moses) and raised Isa (Jesus) to the heavens and sent Muhammad as a mercy to all the worlds —

I will place my feet upon that ground.

And when I do, the first name on my lips will be the name that Jibrael (Gabriel) called between the heavens and the earth on that night in Ramadhan:

Ali.

And the prayer will be completed.

And the mihrab will be restored.

And the sword will finally be sheathed.

And the good tree will flower again.

The Closing Salaam

اَلسَّلامُ عَلَيْكَ يَا أَمِينَ اللَّهِ فِي أَرْضِهِ
اَلسَّلامُ عَلَيْكَ يَا أَمِيرَ الْمُؤْمِنِينَ
اَلسَّلامُ عَلَيْكَ يَا سَيِّدَ الْوَصِيِّينَ
اَلسَّلامُ عَلَيْكَ يَا شَهِيدَ الْمِحْرَابِ

Peace be upon you, O Trustee of God on His earth.
Peace be upon you, O Commander of the Faithful.
Peace be upon you, O Master of the Successors.
Peace be upon you, O Martyr of the Mihrab.

اَلسَّلامُ عَلَيْكَ يَا سَيِّدَ عَلِي

Peace be upon you, O Sayyed Ali Khamenei — servant of the dispossessed, guardian of the Wilayah, the one who tasted bread and raisins in childhood and tasted martyrdom in Ramadhan, the one whose arm was given to God forty-five years before his soul followed it.

You succeeded, as your Imam succeeded.

You fell fasting, as your Imam fell fasting.

And you returned to your Lord as you had promised: a humble servant, nothing more.

اَلسَّلامُ عَلَيْكَ يَا سَيِّدَ حَسَن

Peace be upon you, O Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah — lion of the south, voice that never trembled, the one who stood before the world and said

— and proved it with his blood.

You joined the caravan of Karbala from the hills of Lebanon, and the caravan is stronger for your presence.

اَلسَّلامُ عَلَيْكَ يَا حَاجَّ قَاسِم

Peace be upon you, O Hajj Qassem Soleimani — commander of love before commander of war, the one who wept at the graves of his soldiers and carried the ring of Abulfazl on his finger.

You walked between the battlefields of this world and the gardens of the next as if there were no distance between them — and for you, there was none.

Peace be upon Shaheed Beheshti and his seventy-two — whose number echoed Karbala as if God Himself were signing the ledger.

Peace be upon Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, and Hajj Emad Mughniyeh, and Sayyed Hashem, Sayyed Abbas al-Musawi and Shaykh Ragheb, and Shaheed Bahonar, and Shaheed Rajai, and every nuclear scientist whose mind was a weapon the empire could not tolerate.

Peace be upon Ismail Haniyeh, murdered as a guest in the city of his hosts — for even guest-right means nothing to the children of Abu Sufyan.

Peace be upon Yahya Sinwar, who chose the rubble of his homeland over the comfort of surrender.

Peace be upon Shaykh Ahmed Yassin, struck by a missile after the fajr prayer — another mihrab, another blade, another age.

Peace be upon the defenders of every front — from Yemen’s mountains to Iraq’s shrines, from Lebanon’s valleys to Iran’s cities, from the tunnels of Gaza to the classrooms of Minab.

اَلسَّلامُ عَلَيْكُنَّ يَا بَنَاتِ الشَّجَرَةِ الطَّيِّبَةِ

Peace be upon you, O daughters of the Good Tree — the one hundred and sixty-five flowers of Minab, the girls who went to school on a Saturday morning and were received by God before the morning was over.

Your backpacks are witness.

Your lunch boxes are testimony.

Your unfinished homework is a proof that no court on earth can dismiss and no court in heaven will forget.

You are not collateral damage.

You are not statistics.

You are not a “regrettable incident.”

You are the daughters of Fatimah.

You are the branches of the good tree whose roots are firm and whose branches have reached the sky.

And I — the son of Zahra, the hidden one who counts every sparrow that falls — I say your names in the silence of my prayers and I carry your faces in my heart beside the face of Ruqayyah, who also died too young, in the prison of another tyrant, in another age that thought it could bury innocence beneath the rubble of its crimes.

Peace be upon every martyr who joined the caravan of love from the first drop of Abel’s blood to the last breath drawn in Minab.

And may the distance of God — the irrevocable, eternal, unappealable distance of God — be upon every hand that struck, every mind that planned, every tongue that justified, every heart that consented, and every soul that watched and said nothing.

From the first tyrant to the last — from Abu Sufyan to the war rooms of Washington — from Saqifah to the normalisation tables — from the sword of Ibn Muljam to the missiles that fell on a Saturday morning in the month of God —

may God’s distance be upon them all.

And may the proximity of God — the warmth, the mercy, the light, the embrace — be upon every soul that stood, every tongue that spoke, every hand that reached for justice, every heart that broke and reformed itself into a fortress.

وَسَيَعْلَمُ الَّذِينَ ظَلَمُوا أَيَّ مُنقَلَبٍ يَنقَلِبُونَ

“And those who have oppressed shall know to what final place they will return.”

— Qur’an, Surah al-Shu’ara (the Chapter of the Poets) #26, Verse 227

That final place of return is my day.

And my day is coming.

And the prayer that was interrupted in the mihrab of Kufa will be completed.

And the good tree that was struck in Minab will flower again.

And the trust of God on His earth — the trust that Ali carried, that Husayn watered, that Zaynab proclaimed, that Khomeini revived, that Khamenei guarded, that Nasrallah defended, that Soleimani bled for, that one hundred and sixty-five girls were learning to read by —

that trust will be fulfilled.

And I, the son of the trustees, the last of the chain, the hidden one who was never truly hidden from those who sought with sincerity —

I carry the final salaam:

اَلسَّلامُ عَلَيْكَ يَا أَبَتَاهُ يَا أَمِيرَ الْمُؤْمِنِينَ
اَلسَّلامُ عَلَيْكَ يَا مَظْلُوم
اَلسَّلامُ عَلَيْكَ يَا شَهِيد

إِنَّا لِلَّهِ وَإِنَّا إِلَيْهِ رَاجِعُونَ

Peace be upon you, O my father, O Commander of the Faithful.
Peace be upon you, O oppressed one.
Peace be upon you, O martyr.

Indeed, we belong to God, and to Him we return.

And I, the son of the oppressed, am the appointed return.

And from Him alone is all ability, and He has authority over all things.

In May 1998, a meeting took place in Tehran that would underscore the geopolitical and spiritual alignment of two of the most influential figures in the Middle East: Imam Khamenei, the Leader of the Islamic Revolution, and Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the founder and spiritual leader of Hamas.

The recently surfaced archival footage, titled “On the Front Line,” captures a moment of deep mutual respect. It was more than a diplomatic formality; it was a reaffirmation of the ideological bond between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Palestinian resistance.

Who was Sheikh Ahmed Yassin?

To understand the weight of this meeting, one must understand the man in the wheelchair. Born in 1937 in Al-Jura, near Ashkelon, Ahmed Yassin became a refugee during the 1948 Nakba. At the age of 12, a sporting accident left him a quadriplegic, confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life.

Despite his physical frailty and near-blindness, Sheikh Yassin possessed a formidable will. He became a teacher, a preacher, and eventually the founder of Hamas in 1987. He spent many years in Israeli prisons, often in solitary confinement, yet his influence only grew. He was viewed by many as the “Spiritual Father” of the resistance, a man who proved that the strength of one’s convictions outweighs any physical limitation.

“A small, frail man in a wheelchair who shook the foundations of an occupation.”

A Shared Struggle

During the 1998 meeting, Imam Khamenei praised Sheikh Yassin and the fighters in Palestine, stating that they were on the “front line of the war between Islam and disbelief.” He characterised the Palestinian struggle as the ultimate battle between “truth and falsehood,” emphasising that the Islamic Republic had never recognised, and would never recognise, the “usurping government” in the Palestinian lands.

Sheikh Yassin, in turn, expressed his gratitude for the unwavering support of the Iranian people. He noted that the Palestinian people required the support of the entire Arab and Islamic world to withstand “Zionist-US aggressions.”

The Ideology of Resistance

The dialogue captured in the footage highlights several key themes:

• The Rejection of Occupation: Both leaders remained steadfast. Sheikh Yassin famously stated, “We won’t relinquish even a bit or a handspan of the territory of our homeland.”

• Spiritual Fortitude: Imam Khamenei framed the resistance as being completely compatible with Islamic principles and the laws of the Quran, citing Surah Al-Hajj (Chapter 22, The Pilgrimage, Verse 40): “Allah will surely help those who help His cause. Indeed Allah is strong, mighty.”

• The Path to Liberation: They discussed the “plan of action” required to hasten victory, emphasising that victory is inevitable for those who remain committed to the cause.

The Path to Martyrdom

Sheikh Ahmed Yassin’s journey reached its peak on March 22, 2004. As he was being wheeled out of an early morning prayer session at a mosque in Gaza, he was targeted by an Israeli helicopter missile strike. He attained the martyrdom he had long spoken of, leaving behind a movement that had grown from a small group of devotees into a regional powerhouse.

A Legacy Continued

The 1998 meeting solidified a partnership that has shaped the history of the region for decades. The principles discussed—steadfastness (sumud), the necessity of resistance, and the rejection of compromise—remain the cornerstones of the relationship between Iran and Palestinian resistance groups today.

As the footage concludes with scenes of modern resistance, it serves as a reminder that for these leaders, the “front line” is not just a physical location, but a spiritual commitment that transcends generations.

The heaviest grief a society can carry is the loss of its children. When a child is lost, we do not just lose a life in the present; we lose an entire future. We lose the doctors they would have become, the art they would have created, the families they would have raised, and the laughter that would have filled our homes.

Over the past months, the world has witnessed an unimaginable heartbreak. From the devastated neighbourhoods of the Gaza Strip to the quiet, southern Iranian town of Minab, thousands of innocent children have been martyred, their lives cut abruptly short by violence that they had no part in creating.

Behind the staggering statistics—tens of thousands of Palestinian children whose futures were stolen—are individual universes. Each of these children had a favourite song, a favourite game, and a unique way of smiling at their parents. They were children who sought comfort in their mothers’ arms when it stormed, who played in the streets, and who carried the simple, pure hope of growing up. Their innocence was absolute, and their loss leaves a void that can never be filled.

When we speak of these children, we must strip away the noise of the world and remember them for who they truly were. They were not political talking points. They were not collateral. They were sacred, fragile lives entrusted to this world, and the world failed to protect them.

The video before us, a silent and sombre processional of black-and-white portraits, frames faces that should still be lit with laughter. We look into their steady, steady gazes—young boys with neat haircuts, young girls, many in soft white hijabs, looking directly at us with a profound innocence. There is an unsettling trust in their eyes, the simple look of children with an entire life ahead. The stillness of these photographs is their most powerful testimony, a collective silence that speaks of countless unfinished stories and the quiet, crushing absence they leave behind. They are not distant figures in a report; they are these precise, beautiful, unforgettable faces.

This same tragedy recently shattered the Shajareh Tayyebeh elementary school in Minab, Iran. On what should have been a normal Saturday morning, young girls between the ages of 7 and 12 sat at their desks. Their classroom walls were painted with bright murals of trees, crayons, and microscopes. They wore colourful backpacks and possessed a boundless curiosity for the world. Among them were girls like Zaynab, a brilliant student who had memorised the Quran and was eagerly preparing for a national recitation contest.

In a matter of moments, that sanctuary of learning was destroyed. The playground was reduced to rubble, and the bright futures of over a hundred schoolgirls were extinguished. Their parents, who had kissed them goodbye that morning, expecting to hear about their day over dinner, were instead left to search through dust and debris.

To honour these young martyrs is to refuse to let them be reduced to statistics. It is our duty to say their names, to share their stories, and to remember the dreams they held. They leave behind empty desks, untouched toys, and grieving families, but their spirits remain as a testament to the absolute sanctity of childhood. May their memories be a blessing, and may their souls find the profound peace they were denied on earth.

On March 17, 2026, the life of Sayyed Esmaeel Khatib came to a sudden and tragic end following a targeted overnight strike in Tehran. While global headlines naturally focus on his official titles and the geopolitical circumstances of his martyrdom alongside other notable figures, those who understand the human heart know that beneath the heavy mantle of state duty was a man shaped by profound faith, personal loss, and an enduring love for his country.

Born in 1961 in the historic city of Qaen in South Khorasan Province, Sayyed Esmaeel Khatib’s early years were rooted in a deeply traditional and spiritual environment. Long before he was a minister, an official, or a public figure, he was simply a seeker of knowledge. As a young man, he travelled to the holy city of Qom, dedicating himself to the rigorous study of Islamic jurisprudence. He spent his formative years in the quiet, reflective halls of the seminaries, learning under esteemed scholars and cultivating a deep, guiding intellect. For Sayyed Khatib, his faith was not just a subject of study; it was the absolute compass of his life.

However, the tranquillity of his scholarly pursuits was violently interrupted by the outbreak of the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s. It was a crucible that would forever alter the trajectory of his family and his soul. Sayyed Khatib did not merely watch the defence of his homeland from the safety of the seminary; he answered the call to serve, heading directly to the frontlines.

The war exacted a devastating personal toll on him. Khatib endured the agonising heartbreak of losing both his brother and his brother-in-law to the conflict. Furthermore, he himself sustained severe combat injuries that ultimately ended his physical deployment to the front. These early experiences of profound loss and physical pain forged an unbreakable resolve within him. The grief of a bereaved brother and the scars of a wounded defender transformed the quiet cleric into a man who felt a lifelong, solemn obligation to protect the nation for which his family had shed their blood.

Those who knew Sayyed Khatib personally recognised a man of solemn dignity and resilience. Attaining the religious rank of Hojjat ol-Eslam (Proof of Islam), he remained, at his core, a student of the divine. With his dark brown eyes and light gray hair, he carried the visible weight of a lifetime of duty. Having endured the tragic loss of his wife, he walked the latter years of his life as a widower, bearing his personal sorrows with the same quiet stoicism with which he approached his lifelong responsibilities.

Sayyed Esmaeel Khatib’s story is not merely one of offices held or positions appointed; it is a profoundly human story. It is the story of a boy from Qaen who sought God in the seminaries of Qom, a young man who bled on the battlefields to defend his home, and a devoted family man who dedicated his remaining years to ensuring the sacrifices of his loved ones were not in vain.

As he joins the honoured ranks of the martyrs, his legacy transcends the earthly and often turbulent domain of politics. For his nation, and for those who revere the path of ultimate sacrifice, Sayyed Esmaeel Khatib will be remembered as a man who gave his youth, his heart, and ultimately his very life, to the land and the faith he so deeply loved.

Fate is a meticulous architect. In February of last year, it was decided that I would join the 2025 Hajj pilgrimage as part of a journalistic delegation. While the pilgrimage itself is a supreme blessing, it brought with it another: the opportunity to meet a man whose character would leave an indelible mark on my soul.

I first met Shahid Ali Reza Bayat in March 2024, during a visit to the holy sites of Iraq. At the time, he headed the Hajj and Pilgrimage Organisation. There are rare individuals whose inner world is so vastly different from the norm that they radiate a magnetic force. From that first meeting, I was captivated. It is rare to encounter someone who possesses that specific “divine attraction” we once saw in Shahid Qasem Soleimani—a perfect harmony of professional mastery and rare spiritual depth.

A Leader of Intellect and Affection

At management meetings, Dr. Bayat was the embodiment of a decisive leader—intelligent, confident, and exceptionally perceptive. He was a man of few words but great action, solving complex problems with a calm, steady hand.

What struck me most was his natural authority. Even in a high-ranking position, he never demanded subordination through formal rank. His colleagues and deputies followed him not because of official rules, but out of sincere respect and an inner affection. He belonged to that rare echelon of leaders who combine sharp professionalism with a spiritual charisma that makes people follow them with all their hearts.

From the Hall of Power to the Dust of Devotion

The most striking contrast in Dr. Bayat’s character appeared when he entered a holy sanctuary. This decisive, powerful leader would transform into a man of profound humility. I often sat in the background, observing his state of prayer.

During the Hajj, my understanding of him deepened. Despite the crushing weight of international sanctions, he organised one of the most successful pilgrimages since the Islamic Revolution. He worked day and night, sacrificing his own Hajj Tamattu to serve the pilgrims, performing only the Umrah required to enter Mecca. While he sat at the helm of the entire operation, I heard him say he envied the workers in the kitchens. In truth, it was we who envied him.

The Prayer of a Martyr

I truly came to know the soul of Ali Reza Bayat during the recitation of the Dua Qumayl in Medina and Mecca. The moment the prayer began, a deep state of supplication washed over him. Tears flowed freely. He spoke every word as if conversing directly with his Creator from the depths of his heart.

Watching him, I told my friends:

“If a person turns to Allah this sincerely, what could he possibly ask for other than Shahadat (martyrdom)?”

I was certain that was his secret plea.

The Final Chapter: Service and Sacrifice

Following the 12-day war and the painful loss of Shahid Hajj Younes (Abalfazl Nikouei), Dr. Bayat remained a pillar of strength. When Dr. Ali Larijani was appointed Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, he immediately chose Dr. Bayat as his deputy for security. It was a perfect match—two men of quiet intellect and immense capability.

However, before Dr. Larijani could fully utilise his talents, Allah the Almighty had already chosen him. He was elevated to the rank of martyrs by the hands of the most brutal terrorists of our time.

The Legacy of an Unknown Fighter

For years, due to his role in security, there were no photos or videos of Dr. Bayat. But his legacy is defined by three pillars:

• Absolute Professionalism: Exceptional competence in the most sensitive fields.

• Unwavering Justice: Despite his immense power, he never once used his position for personal gain.

• Devotion to the Ahl al-Bayt: A lifelong servant of Imam Hussein (a), leading religious gatherings for decades with sincere humility.

Dr. Bayat has left a heavy wound in our hearts. We loved him, perhaps without him ever knowing it. He was a man we all wish we could see just one more time. We hope that in the abodes of Paradise, Allah will allow us to once again meet with Imam Khomeini, Hajj Qasem, Hajj Younes, Dr. Bayat, and Dr. Larijani.

Insha’Allah.

Sad music is piped into the crypt-like Martyrs’ Museum in Tehran, where artefacts of war and stories of sacrifice aim to inspire new believers in Iran. Scraps of bullet-riddled, bloodstained cloth, a battered pair of field binoculars, strings of prayer beads, and black-bannered religious items from the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s fill display cases in rooms that are often almost devoid of visitors.

“In our beliefs and ideology, the shahid [martyr] has the highest value, the highest position in society,” says Morteza Alizadeh, the museum’s director.

“The museum shows what people have given up—their lives—for the war. It is a way to communicate between the older generation and the newer ones” (Peterson).

Despite this powerful message, the audience is relatively small. Only three or four groups of students visit each week, alongside occasional college and tourist groups and a daily handful of passersby who step inside. The museum stands across the street from the former U.S. Embassy—site of the 1979–80 hostage crisis—where murals criticise the United States and depict the Statue of Liberty with a skull for a face (Peterson).

Inside the museum, visitors hear stories of Iran’s most revered martyrs. In keeping with Shiite beliefs that the sacrifice of blood can revitalise religion, these stories are presented not only as history but also as examples meant to inspire commitment in contemporary life (Peterson).

One story recounts what guides describe as the “miracle” of the daughter of a martyr. Her exam schedule required her father’s signature, yet her father—Mojtaba Salehi, a cleric—had been ambushed and killed while delivering food supplies to soldiers on the front line. According to the account presented at the museum, the girl dreamed that her father had signed the document, and when she awoke, the paper bore his signature. Witness statements displayed in the museum are said to confirm the event (Peterson).

Another tribute honours Mustafa Chamran, a plasma physicist educated at the University of California, Berkeley, who later served as Iran’s defence minister and died at the front during the war. “This is one of our martyrs of the highest level,” explains museum guide Ali Asghar Vafaee (Peterson).

In an era when many societies no longer publicly venerate martyrdom, Iran continues to commemorate those it considers martyrs through institutions such as the central Martyrs’ Museum in Tehran. The museum contains more than thirty rooms, including sections dedicated to women martyrs and interactive digital displays highlighting key historical figures. It is dedicated to individuals who were persecuted for their beliefs, including those tortured under the Shah’s regime as well as those killed during the Islamic Revolution and the Iran-Iraq War.

For many visitors, the museum serves as a poignant reminder of the sacrifices Iranians believe were necessary to preserve their faith and identity despite political upheaval, war, and internal struggle.

Last but not least is the recent martyrdom of the spiritual and supreme leader Imam Khamenei, his wife, his daughter, his son-in-law and his daughter’s 14-month-old baby. Ironically, his picture can be viewed in the museum where his photo was taken when he was imprisoned and tortured under the Shah’s regime and where his people continue to witness his dedication right to the end of his life.

Although the nation mourns at the loss of their beloved leader, who was like a father to them, enduring many struggles and hardships for the sake of his faith and people, the people remain resilient and strong, reminding the world in this holy month what the Quran promises to the people who sacrifice all for the sake of their faith:

Reference
Peterson, Scott. “In Tehran’s Martyrs’ Museum, Iran Courts New Believers.” The Christian Science Monitor.

In the tapestry of spiritual history, few figures command as much reverence across such diverse spectrums as Imam Ali ibn Abi Talib. The recent video tribute, “The Soul That Feels for All,” brings into sharp focus why his name remains etched not just in golden calligraphy on the walls of Najaf, but in the hearts of those seeking a blueprint for a just society.

A Heart Without Borders

The title of the video captures the essence of what made Imam Ali’s leadership unique. He was a man who, despite holding the highest political office of his time, never allowed the “palace” to insulate him from the “street.”

• Empathy as a Mandate: The “soul that feels” refers to his documented inability to eat his fill while knowing a single person in his domain might be hungry.

• The Father of the Orphan: He was famously known for walking the streets of Kufa at night, carrying bread and dates to the poor in secret, preferring to be a silent servant rather than a celebrated ruler.

The Symbolism of the Shrine

The visual backdrop of the video—the intricate blue tiles and the masterful wood carvings of his name—is more than just decoration.

1. The Deep Blue: Represents the infinite nature of the divine knowledge Ali was said to possess (often referred to as the “Gate to the City of Knowledge”).

2. The Golden Inlay: Symbolises the “Alid” light—the spiritual purity that guided his sword in battle and his pen in the Nahj al-Balagha (The Peak of Eloquence).

A Message for the Modern World

The video serves as a poignant reminder that true leadership is measured by responsiveness. To have a “soul that feels for all” is to reject the apathy of the modern age. It challenges viewers to ask: In a world of increasing isolation, how much of my neighbour’s burden am I willing to carry?

Imam Ali’s legacy, as presented in this tribute, is a call to integrate strength with softness. He was the “Lion of God” in defence of the truth, yet a “Soul that Feels” in the presence of an orphan’s tear.

“Live amongst people in such a manner that if you die they weep over you, and if you are alive, they crave your company.” — Imam Ali (AS)

In the grand architecture of human history, the “Path of the Martyrs” is not a relic of a specific region or a localised sentiment. It is a living, breathing philosophy that transcends borders. It is a commitment to a worldview where the struggle for justice is perpetual, and the ultimate sacrifice is viewed as the highest form of witness to the truth.

From the anti-colonial struggles of Africa and Asia to the civil rights movements of the Americas and the spiritual heartlands of the East, this path follows a consistent internal logic: the belief that certain principles are more valuable than life itself.

The Root of Resistance: The School of Sacrifice

At the heart of this subject lies a historical and spiritual archetype that resonates globally. While the imagery of Imam Hussain ibn Ali at the Battle of Karbala remains a definitive compass for millions, his stand represents a universal binary.

On one side is the Front of Justice: the defence of the oppressed and the refusal to bow to tyranny, regardless of the odds. On the other is the Front of Oppression: the use of power to suppress human dignity. By framing modern struggles in these terms, the Path of the Martyrs becomes timeless. It suggests that while the faces of the oppressors change across centuries and continents, the battle for the soul of humanity remains constant.

The Martyr as a Social Catalyst

Unlike conventional views of death, martyrdom—or Shahadat—is viewed as an injection of life into the veins of society. It serves as a profound awakening, intended to shake the collective conscience of a people and force them to confront injustice.

By honouring the fallen, a community creates a powerful bond that transcends individual interests. Perhaps most importantly, the act of embracing the possibility of death strips an oppressor of their primary weapon: fear. When a movement is no longer afraid to lose everything, it becomes invincible.

The Architects and Icons of the Path

The “Path” is built upon a lineage of figures who transitioned from leaders and soldiers to spiritual symbols.

• The Archetype: Imam Hussain’s refusal to pledge allegiance to a tyrant established the principle that death with dignity is preferable to life under humiliation.

• The Global Revolutionary: Figures like Che Guevara or Steve Biko represent the secular manifestation of this path—individuals whose deaths became more powerful than their living presence, fuelling movements for decades.

• The Modern Commander: In the contemporary era, figures like Hajj Qasem Soleimani have become the face of a transnational “Axis of Resistance.” His image, held high by mourning crowds, represents the latest link in an ancient chain, bridging the gap between a military strategist and a living symbol of defiance.

Literature as a Weapon: The “Red Death”

The Path of the Martyrs is sustained by a unique genre of “Resistance Literature.” This writing doesn’t just describe conflict; it sanctifies it. In this tradition, blood is rarely a sign of defeat. Instead, it is depicted as “tulips blooming from the earth,” symbolising growth and rebirth.

Poets and philosophers, from the Latin American liberation priests to Eastern thinkers like Martyr Morteza Motahhari, have argued that a martyr’s death is not a loss but a “shining sun” that illuminates the road for others. They speak of a “Caravan of Light” that travels through history, inviting every generation to join before the opportunity for greatness passes.

The Never-Ending Battle

A central tenet of this path is the belief that the conflict between truth and falsehood is never-ending. This perspective fosters a mindset of long-term resilience. It is a movement that does not measure success solely by immediate political gains, but by the steadfastness of the people.

As the saying goes, “Every day is Ashura, and every land is Karbala.” This treats the struggle as a universal reality. Whether facing external invasion or internal corruption, the Path provides a framework for resistance that is both deeply personal and intensely political.

The Path of the Martyrs remains one of the most potent motivators in the world today. It is a fusion of epic history and soul-stirring art—a world where the pen and the sword are used to write a single, defiant narrative of the human spirit.

In the ancient city of Shiraz, where the scent of orange blossoms meets the spiritual air of the Shah Cheragh shrine, the community recently gathered not for a celebration, but to bid a tearful farewell to one of its youngest sons. Ali Haqshanas, a 14-year-old ninth-grade student at Roshd High School, was martyred in a recent missile and air strike that shook the city, leaving a void that no eulogy can truly fill.

A Life of Promise

Ali was the only child of the Haqshanas family. To his teachers and peers at the District 1 school, he was more than just a student; he was a boy known for his bright spirit and the quiet potential of a life just beginning to unfold. Like many boys his age, he balanced the demands of his studies with the simple joys of youth, unaware that his name would soon be added to the long registry of martyrs who have sanctified the soil of Shiraz.

Educational Background and Tributes

Ali was a student at Roshd High School (District 1) in Shiraz. Following his martyrdom, the school held a special memorial ceremony where his classmates and teachers gathered to honour his memory. His desk was adorned with flowers and his photograph, a tradition in Iranian schools to remember students who have passed away.

Teachers described him as a diligent student with a gentle demeanour, someone who was well-liked by his peers. The local Department of Education in Shiraz also issued a statement of condolence, emphasising that the loss of a student is a loss for the entire nation’s future.

Memorial Services

In addition to the funeral at the Shah Cheragh shrine, several “Third Day” and “Seventh Day” (traditional mourning periods) ceremonies were held in Shiraz. These gatherings often include the recitation of the Quran and “Noha” (mourning poems) dedicated to the innocence of young martyrs. His story has been widely shared on social media under hashtags calling for peace and honouring the “Martyrs of Shah Cheragh.”

The Moment of Martyrdom

The circumstances of Ali’s passing are as harrowing as they are heartbreaking. On Saturday, February 28, 2026, during a period of intense regional aggression, a missile strike targeted the city. Reports from local witnesses and the Tasnim News Agency describe a scene of unimaginable sorrow: Ali was martyred while in the arms of his mother.

The image of a child perishing in his mother’s embrace has resonated deeply across Iran, serving as a stark reminder of the human cost of modern warfare. He was a non-combatant, a “defender of the home” only by virtue of his presence and his innocence.

The Final Journey

On Tuesday, March 3, 2026, the courtyard of the Holy Shrine of Shah Cheragh—the final resting place of Ahmad and Muhammad, the brothers of Imam Ridha (AS)—became the staging ground for Ali’s funeral. Thousands of mourners, including students in their school uniforms and high-ranking officials, carried his coffin through the “King of Light” shrine.

As the funeral procession moved from the shrine toward the Martyrs’ Cemetery (Dar al-Rahmah), the chants of the crowd echoed through the mirrored halls. Ali was laid to rest alongside other victims of the recent strikes, a young “King of Light” joining the ranks of those who have sacrificed their lives for their country.

A Legacy in Light

While Ali Haqshanas was just 14, his martyrdom has unified a grieving public. His story is now a fixture of the Shah Cheragh legacy—a place that has witnessed both historical beauty and modern tragedy. To the world, he may be a statistic of conflict; but to the people of Shiraz and the readers of themartyr.net, he remains a symbol of the purity that endures even when the world is at its darkest.

Today, the nation mourns not just the loss of its Supreme Leader, but the quiet, steadfast heart of his family. Mansoureh Khojasteh Bagherzadeh, who succumbed to her injuries on March 2, 2026, following the devastating airstrikes in Tehran, lived a life defined by devotion, privacy, and profound faith.

Roots in Mashhad and a Life of Endurance

Born into a respected religious and merchant family in Mashhad, her path was inextricably altered when she married a young cleric, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in 1964. She stepped into a partnership that would demand immense emotional endurance. During the fraught decades leading up to the Iranian Revolution and through the gruelling years of the Iran-Iraq War, her husband faced imprisonment, exile, political turmoil, and assassination attempts. Through it all, Mansoureh was the unwavering anchor of their household.

The Matriarch and Heart of the Family

As a mother to six children—four sons and two daughters—she bore the heavy responsibility of raising a family under extraordinary, often dangerous, circumstances. She deliberately created a sanctuary of normalcy and deep spiritual grounding for her children, actively shielding them from the harsh glare of their father’s rising political stature.

Those close to the family recognised her as a matriarch who instilled strict ethical and religious values, ensuring her children remained rooted in faith rather than the trappings of state power. Despite being married to the Supreme Leader, she lived a life of deliberate simplicity. She famously avoided state functions, official photographs, and political manoeuvring, choosing instead to focus entirely on her home, her family, and her private religious obligations.

A Portrait of Mutual Respect

Amidst the heavy political accusations and the harsh spotlight placed upon her husband by the outside world, it is her own simple, profound words that reveal the true nature of their private life behind closed doors:

“60 years of living together, but he never requested a glass of water from me.”

This single sentence shatters the public caricatures, painting instead a portrait of immense mutual respect, humility, and gentle partnership. It speaks to a marriage where the burdens of duty were shared, and where the leader of a nation remained a humble servant within his own home. It reflects a sanctuary where the massive demands of statecraft ended at the front door, replaced by a quiet, enduring tenderness.

A Legacy of Unseen Sacrifice

As we mourn the martyrs of these tragic strikes, we remember Mansoureh Khojasteh Bagherzadeh not just as a wife, but as a silent pillar of strength. Her martyrdom alongside her family marks a heartbreaking end to an era. Yet, her legacy of quiet dignity, steadfast motherhood, and unwavering devotion will remain deeply respected by all who understand the true weight of her unseen sacrifices.

On a dark day for the nation, top defence officials, Admiral Ali Shamkhani and Major General Mohammad Pakpour, were martyred during the recent US-Israeli aerial aggression. Their sudden and violent deaths have prompted widespread mourning as citizens reflect on their decades of service and their ultimate sacrifice for national security.

Admiral Shamkhani, who served as the Secretary of the Supreme National Defence Council, and Major General Pakpour, a prominent commander of the national ground forces, were central pillars of the country’s defence infrastructure. Both men dedicated their lives to safeguarding the nation, and their martyrdom leaves a profound void in the country’s military leadership.

The recent strikes also claimed the lives of several other key national figures. State media confirmed the martyrdom of the Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces, Major General Abdolrahim Mousavi, as well as Defence Minister Brigadier General Aziz Nasirzadeh and Police Intelligence Chief Brigadier General Gholam Reza Rezaeian.

In the most deeply felt loss of the day, the bombardments also resulted in the martyrdom of the nation’s Leader, Ayatollah Sayyed Ali Khamenei. Official reports noted that he was martyred while at his workplace/residence, remaining at his desk and fulfilling his responsibilities to the people until his final moments.

As the country navigates the aftermath of this aggression, communities are coming together to honour the memories of those who fell. Shamkhani, Pakpour, and their colleagues are being remembered today not just for their leadership but for their ultimate sacrifice and their enduring commitment to their homeland.