I was sitting at home on Saturday when my phone started blowing up.
It was my friend. “Did you see the news?” That was all she needed to say. Within minutes, I was in tears, but not the kind I’ve cried before when news from Iran comes through. These were different. These were happy tears. For the first time in a long time, they actually felt like relief.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s Supreme Leader for nearly 37 years, was killed in US and Israeli airstrikes on February 28th, 2026. For Iranians, especially those of us living abroad, it’s hard to fully put into words what that means.
A little while after, my friend called me again. She asked if she could come over because she didn’t know what to do with what she was feeling. Happy, sad, overwhelmed, scared, all of it at once. I told her to come. Because honestly? I felt the same way.
I know a lot of people here don’t understand why Iranians would want the US or Israel to strike their own country. I’ve had those conversations. And I get why it’s confusing. On the surface, it sounds like wanting war on your own people.
But that’s not what it is.
For decades, Iranians have protested, marched, and died in the streets trying to change their government from the inside. The 2022 protests after Mahsa Amini’s death showed the world just how desperately people wanted change, and how brutally the regime crushed it. Young people were killed. Thousands were arrested. Nothing changed at the top.
When you’ve watched that happen over and over again, and every peaceful option has been shut down with violence, the conversation shifts. It’s not that Iranians want war. It’s that for many, this felt like the only way left to remove a government that was never going to leave on its own.
Khamenei is gone now. And while that’s something many of us have waited a lifetime to see, it’s not the end of the story. Iran still has a regime in place, still has power structures that won’t dissolve overnight, and still has a path forward that is deeply uncertain.
But for one afternoon on Saturday, my friend and I sat together, watched the news, and let ourselves feel something we hadn’t felt in a long time.
Hope.
