The Red-Green Alliance on Parade

This year, the Fourth of July marked not just America’s 250^th birthday, but also the start of a six-day funeral procession for the Islamic Republic of Iran’s late Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who died on February 28, 2026 at the age of 86 during a joint U.S. and Israeli airstrike operation. As millions of Americans were preparing to celebrate their nation’s founding, many Western Islamists and their fellow travelers (figurative and literal) were journeying to Iran’s capital, Tehran—driven by religious and/or ideological devotion—to pay their respects to the tyrant responsible for killing countless Iranians in repeated uprisings since the late 1990s, with nearly 40,000 civilian deaths just in the January 2026 protests alone. The responses to the funeral by Western Islamists and their allies show that the “Axis of Resistance” includes not only the Islamic Republic and its terror proxies, but also the “Red-Green Alliance” between Western Islamists and self-avowed Marxists.

Not only did the funeral coincide with America’s semiquincentennial, but it also took place during the holy Islamic month of Muharram and shortly after Ashura—the day when Shia Muslims worldwide mourn the martyrdom of Husayn, the grandson of Muhammad, at the Battle of Karbala in 680 CE. Since the early 1980s, the Islamic Republic has co-opted the religious imagery of Ashura and Karbala, and it did so in full force for Khamenei’s funeral.

In addition to the Islamists who traveled from America and Britain to attend the funeral, a slew of Western journalists and activists were invited by the Islamic Republic to serve as mouthpieces for the regime. The most noted example, especially in right-leaning outlets like Fox News and The New York Post, has been Calla Walsh praising the ayatollah as the “greatest anti-imperialist leader” of her lifetime. More disturbing perhaps was her July 4 post: “Glory and honor to the martyred leader of the free world, Sayyed Ali Khamenei.”

When Walsh proclaimed in a video produced for VPol that Khamenei “was the father of a nation,” one wonders if she also meant the millions of Iranian women resisting the violent system of gender apartheid under the ayatollah. She added that he was “more than just a leader of Iran, more than just a leader of the Muslim world, but a leader for all oppressed and resistant people of the world who are fighting against imperialist arrogance.” In the same video, she commended the “continuity of the Islamic Revolution” on display during the processions. Perhaps ignorant of a 2024 report by GAMAAN (The Group for Analyzing and Measuring Attitudes in Iran) showing that only “about 20% of Iranians support the continuation of the Islamic Republic,” Walsh called the spectacle a “resounding referendum on the Iranian masses’ loyalty to the Islamic Revolution.”

Days before the fighting between the United States and the Islamic Republic resumed, Walsh made the following declaration about the regime’s commemoration of Khamenei:

Her assessment of geopolitics may just be her wishful thinking, considering that she proclaimed “Death to America, Death to Israel” in Persian during her visit to Iran.

Walsh also cast Khamenei as a literary figure. Perhaps trying to evoke the idea that he had the soul of a poet, she referred to him as a “prolific poet and writer.” Though Khamenei did indeed write poetry, he was a failed poet as Persian literary critics have commented.

A former member of the Democratic Socialists of America, and advocate for Communist Cuba, Walsh also touted an image of Fidel Castro and his respect for the ayatollah.

Jackson Hinkle, the co-founder of the American Communist Party and an influencer on X with nearly four million followers, also attended as a guest of the Islamic Republic, but was even less reserved in his praise for the late ayatollah. Having posted in all-caps “LONG LIVE KHAMENEI” more than half a dozen times during the funeral, he also called Khamenei a “HERO!” even more times than that. (Hinkle’s other heroes include Lenin, Stalin, and Mao, who collectively are responsible for over 100 million lives lost.) One also wonders whether Hinkle, as he was mourning the “martyred leader of the Islamic Revolution,” realized that the same Islamic Revolution carried out the executions of about 20,000 Iranian political prisoners—most of them members of Iran’s Tudeh Party, i.e., Communists like himself.

Betraying his Communist comrades is one thing, but he also betrayed his compatriots. He led chants of “Down with USA” while waving an Islamist banner. The self-identified “MAGA Communist” didn’t share the clip of himself chanting “Down with USA,” the whitewashed translation of the Persian slogan “Marg bar Amrika” (Death to America), but he did proudly post a clip of himself leading a “Down with Zionists” chant to a crowd of regime loyalists.

Khamenei, whom he referred to as “Dear leader,” was not only “ON THE RIGHT SIDE OF HISTORY!” but also “did nothing wrong.” Apparently, Hinkle did know about the murder of thousands of young people, including Sarina Esmailzadeh, a bubbly teenage girl bludgeoned by the Islamic Republic during the Women, Life, Freedom movement in 2022. However, he shared a post on X claiming the charge against the regime is an Israeli “lie” and that her mother allegedly stated that the cause of her death was suicide. According to Amnesty International, “statements of these children’s relatives were extracted under coercion involving, among other things, arbitrary arrest and detention, threats to bury child victims in unidentified graves, and threats to kill, rape or otherwise harm relatives or their surviving children if they refuse to ‘cooperate’ with intelligence and security agents.”

According to Hinkle, however, Khamenei “FOUGHT for your FREEDOMS!” In his post for the Fourth of July, days before chanting “Down with USA,” he announced: “It is the duty of every American patriot to pay their respects & honor the life of Sayyed Ali Khamenei.”

Hinkle also embraced religious symbolism during his visit to the theocracy. Arriving in Tehran wearing a T-shirt that read “God’s Army,” the self-professed Orthodox Christian was wearing a pendant in honor of Imam Ali, the defining figure of Shia Muslim hagiography. In an interview with an Indian reporter, he declared: “The gates of heaven will never be open for Trump or for any of these demons that committed these acts of terror.” However, Hinkle failed to show the least bit of concern for the Islamic Republic’s persecution of Christians.

On the contrary, the influencer (who in the past had posted “IRAN DEFENDS CHRISTIANS”) whitewashed the Islamic Republic’s repression of religious minorities. Both he and Bushra Shaikh, a Muslim British journalist who was also a guest of the regime, posted photos and multiple videos of Tehran’s Holy Mary metro station. In one video, Hinkle highlights the fact that the station includes a passage from the New Testament dealing with the Immaculate Conception as well as quotes by Ayatollah Khomeini about Jesus Christ. He’s “shocked” that there is a passage in the Quran about Jesus, as well. Hinkle overlooks the fact that in the Islamic Republic, Jesus and Mary may be mentioned publicly only in conformity with the standard Islamic accounts—to say nothing of the regime’s persecution of Baha’is.

Indeed, Christians in Iran are forbidden from fully practicing their faith. Proselytization or evangelism, a foundational principle in Christianity, is illegal. Days before Hinkle’s arrival in Iran, the regime had sentenced 18 Christians to prison for their faith. Christians in Iran have even been sentenced to death for apostasy from Islam. In recent years, there has been a six-fold rise in the imprisonment of Christians in Iran and the repression is only increasing. Even Armenian Christians, whom Hinkle points to as the model of the regime’s purported tolerance, have been imprisoned. As Hinkle and Shaikh were taking selfies in front of the statue of Mary, Ghazal Marzban, an Iranian Catholic, was on hunger strike in Evin Prison.

There were other commentators whose rallying behind the Islamic Republic betrayed their ignorance about Iran. Glenn Greenwald quipped on X that Max Blumenthal “somehow has survived despite being an American Jew” in Iran—straw-manning criticism of the Islamic Republic’s anti-Zionism. Indeed, thousands of Jewish Iranians live in the country, but as Roya Hakakian explains in The Atlantic, they “face a new age of anxiety after decades of uneasy coexistence with the mullahs’ regime.” Greenwald wrote in the same post: “Almost impossible to imagine crowd sizes this large for a modern-day American leader,” losing perspective of the fact that U.S. presidents are not religious rulers appointed for life.

Max Blumenthal, another one of the Islamic Republic’s guests, posted a video of regime supporters chanting “Haydar,” a name associated with the holy Shia figure of Imam Ali. He captioned the video, “Tehran’s Engelhab [sic] Square is rocking tonight”—an ironic word choice given that musicians face flogging and long prison sentences for their music.

Reminiscent of Tucker Carlson’s take on Moscow, the Canadian journalist and lawyer Dimitri Lascaris wrote on X: “In America, there are homeless people everywhere. I’m currently in Iran. It’s my third visit in 14 months. I have yet to see a homeless person here.” In fact, there is a homelessness problem in Iran. Even the Iranian Students’ News Agency (ISNA)—state-sponsored propaganda—has acknowledged Iran’s homeless.

The presence of Yemeni Houthis was another point of interest among Western Islamists and their allies. Jackson Hinkle, for example, posted “YEMEN HAS ARRIVED IN TEHRAN, IRAN” with a photo of himself, Max Blumenthal, and a Houthi representative. The U.K.-based journalist Sulaiman Ahmed also tweeted about the Houthis. His first post showed himself with a group of Houthis. The second post included another photo with one of those same men, captioned: “HOUTHIS - ITS [sic] GOING TO BE HUGE.” While Hinkle and Ahmed seemed to celebrate the presence of the Houthis in Iran, The Jerusalem Post reported that the internationally recognized government of Yemen did not. In an official statement, the Yemeni President, Rashad al-Alimi, said that the direct flight operated by the Islamic Republic to transport the terrorists from Sanaa to Tehran was “a flagrant violation of the sovereignty of the Republic of Yemen and a blatant challenge to international law.”

In other videos, Ahmed, who is also a scholar of Islamic theology, commented on the war while in a “sea of resistance” together with members of Liwa Fatemiyoun (also known as the Fatemiyoun Division), a Tehran-backed militia designated by the U.S. and Canada as a terrorist organization, which the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) had recruited to fight for the Assad regime in Syria. While marching with the Fatemiyoun, in another video Ahmed declared: “You need to resist. You need to continue fighting oppression and you need to continue fighting against America and Israel. You can’t stand down.”

Ahmed, for whom attending the funeral was “a once in a lifetime opportunity,” appeared twice on Iranian state media during his visit. In his first appearance on PressTV, he said of Khamenei, “He always wanted to put the Iranian people first” and “without selling out Iran to the American empire or to the Israeli empire.” He shared his geopolitical views in his other appearance on PressTV, stating: “You’ve seen the complete weakening of the U.S. empire,” and “the U.S. militarily isn’t strong.”

While marching with the Fatemiyoun militia, Ahmed was joined by Chris Helali, an Iranian-American member of the American Communist Party. On Instagram, Helali posted two noteworthy photos from Iran: one saluting an image of Khamenei and another pumping his fist in front of a sign calling for the assassination of U.S. President Donald Trump.

Bushra Shaikh, the British journalist who posed with the statue of Mary, also made the rounds on Iran’s state media. Though she wrote on X that she was doing “independent journalism” and “breaking the narrative” of “the Western propaganda machine,” she participated in Iranian propaganda, interviewing and meeting with regime officials.

Shaikh also provided extensive commentary on X during her trip. In a clip posted on X, she described the funeral as “the most historic funeral in history…of this earth, actually.” At a news conference hosted by the regime, she posed the question, “Shall we kill the Pope?” She also posted “Long live the Islamic Republic” and a story about participating in an art installation to “mark the 250th anniversary of American independence” that “revealed 250 years of American crimes” with a photo mosaic depiction of Benjamin Netanyahu.

It wasn’t just fellow travelers who praised Khamenei. American Islamists also expressed their support for Khamenei, either by going to Iran for the funeral, posting on social media, or commemorating him in their mosques. The Manassas Mosque of Virginia held multiple services “in honor and memory of Imam Sayyid Ali Khamenei” and to “offer him our prayers and ask Allah (swt) to grant him the highest ranks among His righteous servants, accept his lifetime of service and sacrifice.” (The use of the title “Imam” for Iran’s supreme leader is a radical departure from traditional Shiism and dates to the 1979 Islamic Revolution.)

Shia Islamists from Dearborn, Michigan also responded to Khamenei’s funeral. Ahmad Charara, the director of the Hadi Institute, documented his travels to Tehran in posts to his Instagram story on his since-deleted account. The day before the funeral, Charara wrote a post commemorating the dictator: “The greatest man of our lifetime will be laid to rest tomorrow.” According to the Hadi Institute on Facebook, the organization was “under the leadership of Shaykh Usama Abdulghani,” a radical cleric who just in June of this year had called Khamenei the leader of his Shia congregation at Light of Guidance in Dearborn.

On July 10, Light of Guidance hosted a “Martyrdom Commemoration” for Khamenei. In his praise of Khamenei, Abdulghani compared him to the leadership of Hezbollah and Hamas. “The stories are just starting to come out,” he preached, about “how ideal this man was.”

Light of Guidance also played a music video in honor of Khamenei by a pro-regime Iranian singer, Hosein Taheri, during the service. (Coincidentally, Taheri was on stage with Jackson Hinkle and introduced him to the crowd before he began his “Down with USA” chant.)

Hassan Salamey, a lawyer and slam poet in Dearborn who recites his poetry at Light of Guidance, participated in the July 10 commemoration of Khamenei. Salamey used the metaphor of “oxygen” to eulogize Khamenei, saying that he “gave us life.” In effect, he rejected norms of Western liberal democracy as enunciated in the U.S. Constitution by invoking the spirit of Velayat-e Faqih (the Guardianship of the Islamic Jurist). Echoing the ideology of the absolute rule of the Shia clergy, introduced by Khamenei’s predecessor, Ayatollah Khomeini, Salamey denigrated moderate Islam in his poem about Khamenei:

Naeimeh Doostdar, an Iranian journalist writing for Iran International, explains that the images referred to by Salamey had a “propaganda function.” The images are part of “a narrative in which Khamenei is not the leader of a repressive regime, but a ‘lost father.’” She adds that women “play a special role in this narrative, because female crying has always had a political function in the visual culture of the Islamic Republic,” and are used as “tools for generating legitimacy.” Indeed, Salamey’s statement supports Doostdar’s point.

Legitimacy, Salamey argued, lies with the Islamic Republic, and not the United States. He calls the Salute to America fireworks celebration in Washington, D.C., one of America’s “synthetic rituals” to “flex the money of the empire.” He implies that Iran—not America—is “really one nation under God” and “following the path of God, the path of love and truth.”

In another reel, Salamey said that God “raised [Khamenei] like He raised Prophet Yusuf.” He added, “Imam Khamenei was not afraid to speak truth to power,” and was an inspiration against those “who say that we in the West or we in Dearborn should be afraid to speak.”

Another Shia cleric in Dearborn, Ahmed Al-Qazwini, also remarked on the funeral in a sermon that has since been deleted from Instagram. In the video of his sermon at the Islamic Institute of America on July 9, preserved by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), Al-Qazwini said regarding Khamenei, “show me who else has such leaders today,” and praised the ayatollah for “his strong and brave position against the Zionists.” He added that leaders like Khamenei “are our maraji [religious authorities].”

Basira Press, an outlet run by an American Islamist named Ali Salaam (aka Alex Fidel, a Jewish convert), wrote on X that the turnout at the funeral was “a message to the forces of Satan, who culminate in the Epstein class (international Zionist network and US empire).”

Americans weren’t the only Western Islamists to pay their respects to Khamenei. British Islamists, like Hussain Makke, also made the journey. On Instagram, he called Khamenei “the hero of my life.” According to Makke, Khamenei was a “true miracle of a man when you reflect over how his life started and how his life ended.” The supreme leader, Makke wrote, also “embodied Islam, the Quran and Ahlulbayt in their most beautiful colours.”

Another British Islamist, the podcaster Ammar Kazmi, also traveled to Tehran. In a post with photos of himself at the funeral, he remarked about Khamenei: “We do not know except good from him.” In a video, he said: “It was gut-wrenching to see the coffin of the one who I thought one day perhaps I would pray behind, perhaps I would catch a glimpse of his smile at a sermon that he was delivering.” Kazmi also talked of the “people’s righteous anger and hatred against the United States of America and the Zionist entity.”

In another post about the funeral, Kazmi argued, “Westerners who don’t understand the overwhelming love that people have for the martyr Ayatullah Khamenei can’t fathom the different value systems that others live by.” In that post, Kazmi called the West “Godless, atomised, and self-serving” and labeled the pro-democracy, pro-reform Green Movement that took place in 2009 in Iran “foreign-orchestrated, regime-change rioting.”

Hassan Al-Qadri, a British Islamist and influencer, also posted about Khamenei albeit from Britain. In an X post, he stated, “Sayyd Ali Khamenei was a champion of freedom and life.” In another post, he shared a video with a dramatic message and a caption “Our Beloved”:

Indeed, the story of Karbala is a powerful tale that provides a spiritual foundation for much of Shiism. At its core, the Karbala story is about martyrdom, self-sacrifice, and oppression of the just by the unjust—an ethos reminiscent of the Christian story of Christ’s crucifixion. Traditionally, commemorations of Karbala were a cathartic ritual for Shia Muslims, but in the process of the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Khomeini rebranded it as the ideological fuel for the promotion of Islamist revolution. Today, too, the Islamic Republic fully employs the Karbala narrative in its propaganda, which was on full display at Khamenei’s funeral.

That the Islamic Republic promotes radical interpretations of Shia Islam to legitimize its repressive rule over Iran is nothing new or surprising. More troubling, perhaps, is just how many Westerners—Islamists and their fellow travelers alike—participated in the spectacle that was Khamenei’s funeral, using their social media platforms to whitewash the crimes against humanity committed by the murderous Islamist regime in the name of a so-called Axis of Resistance. As ludicrous as its name may sound, the Axis signifies Tehran’s network of terror proxies, including Hamas and Hezbollah, and the Westerners supporting it.

Those Western supporters, the Islamists and Marxists that traveled to Iran to honor a mass-murdering tyrant, have shown—in real-time and high-definition—that a Red-Green Alliance spanning East and West is not a reactionary delusion, but instead an unmistakable reality.