A western humanist’s memory of Sayyed Ali Khamenei

A reflection on Sayyed Ali Khamenei’s legacy, leadership, values, and role in shaping Iran’s development and regional position.

This is a commentary from a non-Muslim, Western social humanist perspective on the great Iranian leader Sayyed Ali Khamenei. He is loved and mourned not just by Iranians, not just by Muslims, but by many other people.

I want to talk about five areas that I remember of him and his legacy. First was his adherence to firm principles, Islamic values, but also humanist values, which we could understand across cultures. During his long presidency and his long time as supreme leader, he made sure that the country invested in the Iranian people, invested in their human resources. And that accounts for the greater advances in human development that are registered by the UNDP. For example, particularly in education and health, from the 1980s onwards, after a period of very weak development under the puppet monarchy, which was really a parasite regime. So investing in the Iranian people was really a huge achievement on the part of the Islamic Republic.

Second was the mature leadership. When Sayyed Ali came to be the leader, he had the experience of being an elected president during wartime. So the lessons of that time gave him a perspective on top of his religious training. In turn, he provided consistent guidance and mentoring; he mentored many great commanders, like Qassem Soleimani, like Hassan Nasrallah, and that leadership was recognised by many other great humanists in the world, like Nelson Mandela and Fidel Castro, for example. They recognised his legacy and his role as a mentor and as a trainer of other commanders.

Sayyed Ali led and developed regional solidarity.  Iran is remarkable for its unwavering support for the Palestinian struggle, which was initiated by the mentor and founder of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, and the formation of an ‘Axis of Resistance’ under Sayyed Ali. All of the independent peoples and states of the region were drawn into that gradually, to fight the common enemy of the region, but really the common enemy of humanity, that of Imperialism and Zionism.

Hassan Nasrallah acknowledged Sayyed Ali’s mentoring role in the Hezbollah victory over the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 2006. And it was Sayyed Ali to whom Commander Qassem Soleimani reported in late 2017 on the historic defeat of ISIS terrorists in all the major cities and towns of the region.

Fourth was Sayyed Ali’s steadfast defense of his nation, that era of strategic patience, which lasted for a very long period of time, in which Iran withheld its retaliation or responses to aggressions by the Israelis, so the country could build up its capacity to face its gravest test, a direct US war of aggression. That began earlier this year and, thanks to the strategy developed by the martyred leader, Iran prevailed. His death and funeral were events in themselves that marked the rise of Iran as a great power and flagged the strategic depth of the nation.

I have heard an honest, liberal Iranian academic say that if the country had given in to the demands of some of the liberal reformers for creating some sort of liberal democracy in Iran, it would have been destroyed in that war. It would have turned into a weak failed state, like that of my own country, where all natural resources have been privatised, the economy is handed over to an Anglo-American financial oligarchy, and Iran would have joined the ranks of slave regimes, producing weapons for the Israelis to pursue their dream of a Greater “Israel”. That would be some of the dreadful consequences of giving up on Iran’s principles and control of its own development.

Finally, the memory of Sayyed Ali Khamenei is that of a loving father and grandfather who presented an example of care, insight, love, and sacrifice, to his last day. We know the final sacrifice and how it came about. He was not prepared to live in some sort of hiding, which held him apart from the people of Iran. If they had no shelter from the merciless Zionist bombing, neither would he.

So those are some of the memories this non-Muslim westerner has of Sayyed Ali Khamenei. His voice and his lessons are still with us, but we really miss him. Damn those evil creatures who murdered him and his family.

https://english.almayadeen.net/articles/opinion/a-western-humanist-s-memory-of-sayyed-ali-khamenei