Across social media and in accounts from residents inside Iran, the news triggered an eruption of emotion—joy, shock and disbelief in equal measure.
One user wrote on X: “I’m crying, laughing, screaming and experiencing every feeling in the world in three seconds.”
According to sources in Tehran who were still able to communicate with the outside world through Starlink satellite internet, residents leaned out of windows or gathered on rooftops soon after the announcement, shouting in celebration.
Farzad, a Tehran resident, said the sound of whistling and honking motorcycles and cars quickly filled the air. “It just erupted all at once,” he said.
Despite severe internet disruptions, videos appearing to show people dancing and celebrating circulated online from cities including Karaj, Qazvin, Shiraz, Kermanshah, Isfahan and Sanandaj.
State media coverage appeared largely unchanged for hours after the reports. It was only in the early hours of Sunday that state television confirmed the news, declaring 40 days of national mourning and a week-long public holiday.
Meanwhile Iranian forces continued missile and drone attacks on Israel and other regional countries, including the United Arab Emirates.
Prince Reza Pahlavi addressed Iranians in a message saying that with Khamenei’s death the Islamic Republic had effectively reached its end and would soon be consigned to “the dustbin of history.”
“Any attempt by the remnants of the regime to appoint a successor to Khamenei is doomed to fail from the outset,” he said. “Whoever they place in his stead will have neither legitimacy nor longevity.”
Iranian authorities are expected to convene the 88 clerical members of the Assembly of Experts—some of whom may currently be outside Tehran—to determine a successor, though doing so could prove difficult under wartime conditions.
Across social media, many diaspora users and some Iranians with internet access described Khamenei as the killer of their dreams and loved ones.
One user posted a video appearing to show young people dancing in the streets of Abdanan, in Fars province—a city where protesters were killed in large numbers less than two months ago.
“You riddled the people of Abdanan with bullets, but today it’s the people of Abdanan dancing on your corpse, criminal Khamenei,” the user wrote.
Others expressed disbelief and demanded proof.
“Khamenei’s death feels so surreal to me that I won’t believe it until I see his body,” one user wrote.
Some said they regretted that he may have died too quickly to answer for decades of repression.
Yet even amid celebration, grief lingered for lives lost under the Islamic Republic.
“If the news is true, how did everything end so suddenly, as if he never existed?” one user posted on X. “Regret for the dear lives lost, regret for years wasted in prisons, regret for lives destroyed.”
