On March 1, 2026, Reza Pahlavi issued his statement on the killing of Ali Khamenei: “Ali Khamenei, the Zahhak of our time; the evil being who, just a few weeks ago, issued the order to slaughter tens of thousands of Iran’s finest children, is gone.“
The Shahnameh framing was not ornamental. For years, Pahlavi has used the Zahhak figure, the serpent-shouldered tyrant who fed on the brains of Iran’s youth, as his shorthand for the Islamic Republic.
And Khamenei, symmetrically, had organized his entire ideological project around the Husayni archetype: the martyr of Karbala, the one who refused submission before Yazid’s overwhelming power. Every day is Ashura. Every land is Karbala. That was the grammar of the revolution.
Now the “Zahhak” is dead (or the Husseiny attained martyrdom depending on your viewpoint). The question that follows is the only one that matters: who is Iran? Continue reading Zahak versus Husayni
