This week, Jewish communities worldwide celebrate Purim. From New York to Tel Aviv, London to Los Angeles, families don elaborate costumes, exchange gifts and recount the biblical story of survival recorded in the Book of Esther. Two and a half thousand years ago, in ancient Persia, the nefarious minister Haman plotted, albeit unsuccessfully, to annihilate the Jewish people.
On Purim, we eat hamantaschen, triangular pastries said to represent Haman’s three-cornered hat. This year, some have quipped about eating “Khamentaschen,” denoting the demise of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the former Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic who had dedicated much of his 37-year rule to the obliteration of the Jewish state.
The historical resonance is striking. This past weekend, in a joint US-Israeli military operation in Tehran, Khamenei was eliminated in his compound, along with dozens of members of his defence leadership apparatus.
The longest-serving autocrat in the Middle East, and only the second supreme leader in the Islamic Republic’s 47-year history, Khamenei wielded absolute authority over political, military, judicial and economic policy for nearly four decades. His regime brutalised its own population while exporting terror far beyond the country’s borders.
For 47 years, the Islamic Republic defined itself by perpetual resistance to, and violent animosity toward, Israel and the United States. Its dual raison d'être – “death to Israel” and “death to America” – was not rhetorical flourish. It was strategic doctrine. Iran’s so-called “axis of resistance,” with Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza, Kataeb Hezbollah in Iraq, and the Houthis in Yemen, became the regime’s regional subsidiaries and instruments of terror. Since October 7, that “ring of fire” has been severely weakened.
At the same time, the Islamic Republic has waged a quieter but no less devastating war against its own citizens. Decades of corruption, mismanagement, environmental plunder and ideological adventurism isolated a nation of immense intellectual, cultural and artistic prowess.
In the early 1970s, one US dollar bought roughly 70 Iranian rials. Today, a dollar buys around 1.3 million rials. That staggering collapse is more than an economic statistic; it is a measure of generational theft.
Tens of thousands of Iranians have been killed in regime crackdowns. Since the 2009 Green Revolution, and again in 2017, 2019, 2022, 2023 and 2025, millions of Iranians have demanded major political reform or an end to the theocratic doctrine underpinning the Islamic Republic’s system of governance known as Velayat-e Faqih, or “the guardianship of the jurist.”
The regime has been fragile for years. That fragility was masked by repression and at times by Western equivocation. Even now, some media outlets have eulogised the octogenarian dictator in tones bordering on admiration. The New York Times described him as a “hard-line cleric who made Iran a regional power,” as though deploying murderous militias across the Middle East and pursuing nuclear brinkmanship were feats of admirable statecraft.
The reaction to Khamenei’s death inside Iran tells a different story, with droves of Iranians seen on social media singing and jeering in jubilation. “Everyone is joyful; it is one of the best days of probably 95 per cent of Iranians’ lives,” one resident in the city of Karaj told The Wall Street Journal following Khamenei’s death.
To grasp the gravity of this moment, we must go back in history. In 1979, Iranian revolutionaries seized the US embassy in Tehran, holding more than 50 Americans hostage for 444 days. In 1983, 241 U.S. Marines were killed in Beirut by an Iranian-backed attack. In 1992, 29 Israelis and Argentinians were murdered in a Tehran-backed Hezbollah attack in Buenos Aires. In Iraq, 603 American troops were killed by Iranian-backed militias and improvised explosive devices. Just last year, more than 170 attacks targeted US forces in Iraq and Syria. There have been ballistic missile strikes on Israeli city centres and US military bases, as well as foiled assassination attempts on senior American and Israeli officials.
For nearly half a century, the regime targeted Americans and Israelis while expanding its nuclear programme and building longer-range missiles designed to threaten not only Israel but US allies and global stability. Left unencumbered, it would have further destabilised an already volatile region.
Operation Roaring Lion’s objectives are clear: eliminating the Islamic Republic’s nuclear ambitions; destroying its ballistic missile arsenal and production facilities; and further scaling back the proxy network threatening Israel and its allies.
Critics warn of chaos, escalation and unintended consequences. Those risks are real. Yet many Iranians dancing in the streets this week are not revelling in violence. They are celebrating the possibility of an end to a suffocating status quo. As Iranian-American writer Roya Hakakian noted, people say there is nothing worse than war. But there is: “a peace beneath whose façade a nation’s hope dies a thousand deaths every day.”
For many Iranians, this rupture, as terrifying as it is, may represent their best chance at genuine peace and prosperity. Only then can Iran begin to reclaim a role on the global stage that its people deserve.
This is also a pivotal moment for the broader Middle East. If Iran’s revolutionary project – its export of militancy, its nuclear brinkmanship, its ideological absolutism – can be replaced by a state focused on economic prosperity and regional integration, the ripple effects would be profound. The Abraham Accords showed that old enmities can soften. A reimagined Iran, one that advances a revitalised “Cyrus Accords” and revives its pre-1979 relationship with Israel, would fundamentally transform the strategic landscape.
Two thousand five hundred years ago, the Jews of Persia faced an existential threat and survived.
This week, as Jews celebrate Purim and Iranians confront an uncertain dawn, the world stands at the doorstep of history. For the sake of the extraordinary people of Iran – and for the sake of peace in the Middle East – let us hope that this moment of upheaval becomes a moment of freedom and renewal.
Jonathan Harounoff, Israel’s international spokesperson to the United Nations, is the British award-winning author of “Unveiled: Inside Iran’s #WomanLifeFreedom Revolt”
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