By Soheila Zarfam
TEHRAN - Disbelief, grief, anger, and a strong desire for revenge—these were the emotions that permeated the air as thousands of citizens gathered in Tehran's main central squares after learning that the U.S. and Israel had assassinated their beloved leader.
Crowds began gathering around 6:00 a.m. Sunday morning, shortly after the news was broken by national television, and continued to swell throughout the coming hours. One woman I met at Palestine Square before the sun had fully risen said she left her home and moved toward the main square in her neighborhood out of despair. "I could not stay home anymore. I wanted comfort, and when I got here, I saw countless other men and women with whom I could cry," she explained.
Another woman, who had been crying for at least an hour straight, said she was most upset by the enemies' accusations against the Leader. "They had been saying for months that he was hiding in bunkers. Yesterday, they killed him in his office where he had been working for over the last three decades. Lying is all these despicable creatures that rape little girls and eat infants for fun can do."
Sadness was certainly a predominant emotion, evident in the tears, shouts, and wailing the citizens released. But beneath it all, anger was also visible. "The criminal president of a country hundreds of kilometres away decided to come here and assassinate our leader. It is like 1953 all over again. These Americans need to be put in their place once and for all," a young man in his mid-20s told me.
The slogans being chanted showed that many others shared his feelings. "'Armed Forces; Revenge! Revenge!'" and "'We'll fight, we'll die, but no compromise!'" were two of the most predominant chants.
The gatherings were not limited to Tehran. In almost every province of Iran, large crowds assembled. In the central cities of Esfahan and Qom, men took to the streets with shrouds. In some of Iran's southern cities, where traditional mourning ceremonies are still observed, women chanted eulogies and beat their chests. In the eastern city of Mashhad, people cried out to the 8th Imam in his holy shrine, and in the northwestern city of Tabriz, citizens chanted slogans in Azeri, bidding farewell to the "son of Azerbaijan," a reference to Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei's Azeri roots.
The Iranian Armed Forces and political officials have stated they will continue their attacks—beginning less than two hours after the initial strikes on Tehran—until the enemy starts to beg for mercy. Shia Muslims in neighboring countries, who revered Ayatollah Khamenei not only for his support of the Palestinian cause and Islam but also for being a Marja-e-Taqlid (religious authority), took to the streets and attacked U.S. premises in their countries. The assassination of Ayatollah Khamenei was not an event everyone deemed impossible. After all, he was an avid follower of Imam Hossein, and in the school of thought of the resistance, martyrdom is the greatest and most valuable gift God can give a servant. But they had also always known what would happen if the assassination took place. The U.S. and Israel may not have known this, or perhaps they wilfully decided to underestimate the potential consequences.
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