The Foundation of the After
Why the News of Khamenei’s Death Demands the Courage of Consistency Over the Catharsis of Revenge.
For a brief moment, something appeared that is otherwise rare. Across different segments of Iranian society—inside and outside the country—a shared reaction emerged. The news produced not only agreement but a visible convergence of feeling. A kind of unity formed, expressed through what could be described as a “consensus of joy.”
This moment is not difficult to understand. After decades of repression, executions, humiliation, and loss, the desire for relief is not only expected; it is human. When a figure associated with that system is suddenly removed, the reaction takes the form of release. It can feel, even if only briefly, like resolution.
And yet, this moment of alignment is fragile. What appears as unity may conceal something else: not agreement on principles, but a shared exhaustion. The reaction may be less a political position than a symptom of moral fatigue—a condition in which the demand for justice, after years of deferral, is replaced by the acceptance of any form of closure.
In this sense, the celebration is psychologically intelligible; yet its normalization poses a structural risk. If the aspiration of the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement is to establish a political order grounded in law, accountability, and dignity, then the forms through which we respond to events cannot be indifferent. The goal cannot be achieved through means that contradict it.
The movement from what Francis Bacon once called “wild justice” toward constitutional justice is not only a legal transition; it is a moral one. It requires that justice appear not only as a future outcome but as a present constraint.
The Scapegoat and the Rebel
Within this moment of apparent consensus, a deeper tension becomes visible. One way of understanding the event suggests that the removal of a single figure represents the removal of the problem itself—that if this one person disappears, the structure of violence dissolves with him. This intuition is not new. René Girard described it as the scapegoat mechanism: the belief that collective disorder can be resolved through the elimination of a single body.
But this resolution is symbolic, not structural. The system that produced the violence does not disappear with the individual. It remains in institutions, in practices, and in the habits of political life. The feeling of peace, therefore, may be real—but it is temporary.
This tension becomes sharper when viewed through the position of those who have long opposed the death penalty. For years, many have defended the principle that the right to life is universal. The difficulty arises when this principle becomes conditional. If the right to life applies only to those deemed worthy of it, then it ceases to function as a right. It becomes a privilege—granted or withdrawn depending on circumstance. And once it becomes a privilege, it is no longer protected from power.
In The Rebel, Albert Camus describes a figure who resists injustice but refuses to become its mirror. The rebel establishes a limit: violence is opposed, but not reproduced. The revolutionary, by contrast, removes that limit. Violence becomes acceptable when it serves the end. The question, then, is not abstract; it is immediate: which position is being enacted?
The Pedagogy of Power
The argument that external force can produce democracy often appears in this context. Germany is frequently cited as a successful example of transformation through war, while Iraq is invoked as a cautionary tale of chaos. Yet this debate often overlooks a more fundamental distinction: the institutional memory and political practice of the two societies.
The German Case: A Foundation for Restoration
In the German case, despite the catastrophe of Nazism, there remained elements of institutional continuity and a historical experience—however fragile—of constitutionalism and administrative order. The postwar period was therefore not the creation of an entirely new political culture, but a process of re-learning and re-establishing limits. This process required intense internal labor: a willingness to examine the past and to reconstruct a system in which power would again be constrained by law. What mattered was not simply what was done to the regime from the outside, but what the society was already capable of doing from within.
The Iraq Case: The Void of Pseudodemocracy
In Iraq, the situation unfolded differently. The long-term political structure—particularly under the Ba’athist regime—had hollowed out the independent functioning of law. This was the hallmark of a pseudodemocracy: a system in which the forms of democracy—elections, parliaments, procedures—exist, but do not function as constraints on power.
When the regime collapsed, this absence of substance became visible. The transition did not fail because democracy was not declared, but because it had never been practiced. In the absence of shared legal habits and institutional trust, political life reverted to forms already familiar: fragmentation, retribution, and the struggle for raw survival.
The Internal Difference
The difference between these trajectories is a matter of political pedagogy. A society learns, through its responses to crisis, what counts as a legitimate resolution. In this sense, the celebration of an extrajudicial killing is instructive. It teaches that the removal of a person can substitute for the construction of a system. This is precisely the logic of pseudodemocracy: a politics centered on figures rather than structures, and on outcomes rather than processes.
The Architecture of the “After”
Hannah Arendt distinguishes between violence and power. Violence can destroy structures, but it cannot create legitimacy. Power, conversely, emerges from people acting together within a shared legal and political framework.
The “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement is, at its core, a movement of power. It relies on collective presence and the demand for a framework that protects life rather than suspends it. A missile strike belongs to a different logic. It is an act of violence—technological, distant, and final. It removes, but it does not constitute.
History offers a warning. Following Iran’s Constitutional Revolution, some intellectuals, in pursuit of order, supported the consolidation of power under a strongman. The desire for results overshadowed the commitment to process. In doing so, they helped create the conditions for the next form of authoritarianism. This is the strongman trap: the substitution of structure with force, of law with outcome.
The Courage of Consistency
The position that insists on process over immediate resolution is not the easiest one to hold. In moments of collective relief, it can appear out of place—even unreasonable—to demand a trial or to refuse celebration. And yet, it is precisely this position that preserves the distinction between justice and power.
If the aspiration is a different political order, then the logic through which that order is approached matters. True transformation does not occur through the elimination of individuals, but through the rejection of the logic that makes elimination appear sufficient.
It requires holding a line at the very moment it becomes easiest to abandon it. If the “New Iran” is to be something more than a reversal of roles, then its foundation cannot be built on exceptions. The law—imperfect, slow, and often frustrating—remains the only structure capable of protecting everyone, including those who have no power.
To defend it in moments when it seems least useful is not to defend a person. It is to defend the possibility of a different future.