Many in Chicago’s Iranian community are in high spirits after Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was reported dead following a major attack Saturday by the United States and Israel.
Saba Niaki, an Iranian living in Chicago, was getting ready for another rally in solidarity with Iran when she heard the news.
Niaki, 38, who had stopped at a Starbucks near Daley Plaza where the rally was to be held, was carrying posters with the faces of the victims of the recent protests in Iran.
“I started screaming and there was a construction guy standing on the railroad, and he was like, what happened? And I was trying to explain to him what happened,” Niaki said Saturday.
The rally quickly turned into a street celebration with dozens of people dancing, singing and passing around sweets like Yazdi Baklava and chocolate, said Nikai.
“I couldn’t stand still,” said Niaki, a user experience designer from Tehran living in Pilsen, who shared videos of the celebration on her social media. “As soon as I was hugging someone, we were bursting into tears.”
In late December, thousands of protesters in Iran took to the streets against Khamenei’s government and worsening economic conditions. More than 4,000 were killed, the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency said, and communications services including internet, phone and texting were shut down by authorities on Jan. 8, although some communications have been restored.
Tensions had increased in recent weeks as American warships moved into the region. President Donald Trump said he wanted a deal to constrain Iran’s nuclear program as the country struggled with growing dissent following nationwide protests, according to the Associated Press. On Saturday, several locations across Iran were bombed, and Trump announced he was aiming to destroy the country’s military and nuclear abilities.
Iranians in Chicago have been staging a series of protests in solidarity with the Iranian people and asking for regime change since the January killings. Some, like Farzad Ahmadpour, also asked for U.S. intervention. “We are desperate,” he told the Tribune in January.
A senior White House official said Sunday that Iran’s “new potential leadership” has suggested it is open to talks with the United States, according to the Associated Press. The White House official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal administration deliberations, said President Donald Trump says he is “eventually” willing to talk, but for now, the military operation “continues unabated.”
Tirdad Kiamanesh, a professor at Northwestern University and the co-founder of the activist group Chicago4Iran said he was shocked and still processing what he had just seen in the news after years of participating in rallies and calling for change.
“I need to just sit somewhere and just drink and cry, I think. That’s how I’m going to show my happiness,” he said, adding that he hopes there will be a democratic transition of power in Iran.
While many celebrated the death of Khamenei, 86, some organizations criticized the Trump administration’s actions.
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The Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Muslim civil rights and advocacy group, called for “an end to the Trump administration’s ‘unnecessary, unjustified, and unconstitutional’ regime-change war launched against Iran for Israel’s benefit,” in a statement Saturday morning, noting the dozens killed in a girls’ school during the attack.
According to University of Chicago political science professor Paul Poast, weeks of military buildup in the region made the attack somewhat predictable. But the outcome remains uncertain, he said.
Even if the supreme leader is toppled, said Poast, who spoke to the Tribune before news of Khamenei’s death broke, regime change is difficult because governments are multilayered, meaning someone else can fill in his shoes.
He compared it with the U.S. military strike on Venezuela that removed Maduro just weeks before, and whose government has remained largely unchanged for now.
“It wasn’t a complete regime change, and that was in many ways an easier situation than this one,” said Poast. “There’s a good chance that everything kind of stays the same.”
If not, there could be an outbreak of fighting, such as civil war, that could be long and devastating to Iran. “It would make the war in Syria look small in comparison,” Poast said.
With large-scale attacks on Venezuela and Iran, the U.S. administration and Secretary of State Marco Rubio may eye Cuba next, he said.
“That is really the main target for Rubio,” said Poast. “ I think it’s very understandable that people would be looking at Cuba next; I think the key question is: Does the momentum continue?”