Many people around the world interpreted the killing of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei simply as the death of a prominent politician. Yet many Iranians and Shiites took the news very differently, with a mixture of shock and bewilderment. This is the first time in decades that a leading cleric, a marja, has been killed.
Iraqi Shiites, who make up the majority of the country’s population, share this sense of dismay. Shiite traditions and beliefs place a strong emphasis on the role of martyrdom, and Iraqi believers are no exception. Yet their views are also shaped by specifically Iraqi characteristics — above all the role of their own spiritual establishment in Najaf, known as the hawza. Most Iraqi Shiites follow the guidance of the hawza, embodied by Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, rather than the teachings of the clerics of Iran. Awareness of this nuance is critical to understanding how Iraqis have received the news of Khamenei’s death.
The Symbolism of Martyrdom
The assassination of Iran’s Supreme Leader has reminded many Iraqi Shiites of the execution of the scholar Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr by the Saddam Hussein regime in the winter of 1980. Sadr was the spiritual father of the Islamic Dawa Party, the Shiite Islamist group that has dominated the Iraqi government since the U.S. invasion in 2003. Many leaders of the Shiite political parties hold the late Sadr in high esteem, viewing him as their theorist and spiritual guide.
Similarly, the Shiite scholar Muhammad Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr was killed in February 1999, along with two of his sons, in an armed attack on his car on the outskirts of Najaf—an operation also widely attributed to Saddam Hussein. The “Second Sadr” is also the spiritual father of the Sadrist movement led by his son Muqtada (known to most westerners as a leader of the resistance to the U.S.-led occupation), as well as the movements that later splintered from it, which include at least one of the pro-Iranian militias that continue to oppose the Americans.
The “martyrdom” attained by these religious figures represents significant symbolic capital. Every year, these events are commemorated to emphasize the injustice and criminality of the pre-2003 regime. Followers are unlikely to forget the memory of these scholars’ deaths for a long time. Martyrdom here carries deep semantic weight. Many Shiites frequently cite a saying attributed to Imam Ja’far al-Sadiq: “Death is a custom for us, and our honor from God is martyrdom.”
The Paradox of Power
The obsession with the concept of martyrdom and its symbolic capital has led some jurists to interpret historical events in a way that classifies all religious leaders as martyrs. This perception extended to the death of the Prophet Muhammad himself and his daughter, Fatima al-Zahra, who are also considered martyrs according to the prevailing Shiite narrative.
From this perspective, one can understand how death at the hands of enemies may be viewed as a symbolic gain rather than a defeat. Hence, following the fall of the Qaddafi regime, many Shiites in Lebanon and Iran rushed to investigate the fate of Musa al-Sadr, a leading Lebanese-lranian cleric and political leader who disappeared in Libya in 1978. His followers attempted to recover his body but have never succeeded. Disappearance and forced absence are considered as slightly lower than outright martyrdom, and recovering the body completes the symbolic scene.
Yet Iraqi reactions to Khamenei’s death are subject to a stark paradox: Shiites in Iraq have effectively ruled the country for twenty-two years. They control its economic resources and infuse the public space with their cultural and religious narratives. Today, the only “victimhood” they face results from the poor administration and corruption of the Shiite political class rather than from traditional enemies.
Identity and Political Allegiance
Including the death of Ayatollah Khamenei within the story of Iraqi Shiite victimhood involves a degree of distortion. Yet some leaders possess enough religious imagination to accept it, especially among those who view Shiite identity as superior to national identity. In some cases, this leads them to the point of attacking the concept of national identity itself. In 2022, Khamenei’s representative in Iraq, Hashim al-Haidari, described national identity as an “idol worshipped instead of God.” A TV presenter republished the quote on his website after the start of the war, and it has circulated widely on social media since then.
Due to the dominance of pro-Iranian forces over the public sphere, the censorship they impose on social media, and their boldness in using violence against opponents outside the framework of the law, Iraqi media and social media have been flooded with grief and mourning for the late Iranian leader. It has become difficult to distinguish between genuine emotions and those expressed out of fear or sycophancy toward armed groups.
The Divergence of Religious Authority
Amid these tensions, a general feeling prevails among Iraqi Shiites that a setback may be on the horizon, and that power might be snatched from their hands. Politicians and militias exploit this feeling to bolster talk of resistance to America and Israel. No one wishes to face the more serious questions facing the current Iraqi regime, so they return to the more comforting narrative of victimhood.
The question remains: Why does the average Shiite feel weak, and why do they believe their state is so fragile? And why does this citizen feel that Iran is their true state, and that their existence in Iraq is not secure without it?
The answer lies in the narrative that pro-Iranian armed factions have worked on for over a decade: By linking the fate of Iraq and its Shiites to the state of clerical rule in Tehran, they capitalize on a weak national discourse about the nature of the state that lacks the ability to consolidate Iraqi identity or refute pro-Iran narratives.
Many citizens are genuinely saddened by the killing of Khamenei, whom they see primarily as a dignified, elderly clergyman with a literary sensibility. The matter becomes more complex when pro-Iranian factions demand something beyond purely religious expression. The majority of Iraqi Shiites do not follow the religious authority of Khamenei in their religious affairs, but rather the hawza of Najaf, and many do not believe in the Iranian theory of clerical rule that puts influential scholars in charge of the state.
The Najaf religious establishment, through a statement from the office of Grand Ayatollah Sistani, reflected the general mood of conservative Shiites in Iraq: It condemned the assassination and offered condolences, but it did not issue a fatwa for a holy war against America or Israel as some Iranian scholars did. Nor did it call on Iraqi Shiites to support Iran in the war. This does not mean that the clerics in Najaf support Iran’s enemies. Rather, they view matters from a different angle — one based on the general interests of the Shiites and the institution of the hawza in Najaf, and which declines to drag them into political or military adventures with unknown consequences.
Ultimately, regardless of the outcome of the ongoing conflict, the larger social body of conservative Shiites in Iraq will remain linked to the Najaf religious establishment, not the Iranian one. The disappearance of an Iranian clerical leader or the emergence of a new one will not significantly change the core beliefs of Iraqis.
This does not, however, negate their feelings of sorrow over the loss of a leading cleric. Nor does it reduce the anxiety many feel about the future of Shiites in Iraq — especially if they are confronted with a decline in the power of Iran, a factor upon which the ruling Shiite political class in Baghdad largely relies.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Middle East Broadcasting Networks.
Ahmed Saadawi
Ahmed Saadawi is an Iraqi novelist, poet, screenwriter, and documentary filmmaker.
