Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed last week in an attack by the US and Israel. Iran has declared 40 days of mourning. Muslims around the world have come out in large numbers to protest his killing and express their grief.
In India, thousands of Muslims took to the streets in Kashmir, Lucknow, Hyderabad and Bhopal, among other places, to protest the killing.
But beyond the Islamic or religious world, there is only a limited understanding of the man who became Iran’s second Supreme Leader, after Ayatollah Khomeini, the cleric who led the Islamic revolution in 1979.
Khameini led Iran for 36 years, both during the Iran-Iraq war and in the period after, when Iran had to deal with crippling western sanctions.
Besides being a revered religious leader, he is also considered an anti-imperialist statesman who exerted immense religious and political influence in West Asia. What was his legacy, and what are the political, religious and geopolitical implications of his killing – for Iran, for the ongoing war in West Asia, and beyond?
Guest: Ziya Us Salam from The Hindu’s Delhi bureau
Host: G Sampath
Producer and editor: Jude Weston
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