Inside New York City’s cosplaying Khamenei protests
Manhattan, New York City
As the sun set over Lower Manhattan last night, a photo of the late Ali Khamenei stood beneath Washington Square Arch — a place normally packed with NYU art students, vagrants, and far too many rats — beside one of George Floyd. Another display exhibited Khamenei, his predecessor, Khomeini, and the Sixties CIA-deposed Congolese revolutionary Patrice Lumumba on a table of roses. “Down with US imperialism” and “Iran’s missiles will reply,” chanted the demonstrators, behind a makeshift barricade and a cadre of NYPD officers.
This was the “vigil and community iftar for Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and all martyrs of Amerikan imperialism” (“Amerika,” as opposed to America, apparently signals the activists’ rejection of “white settler-colonialism.”) The protesters — clad in intimidating face masks and keffiyehs — proudly flew numerous flags of the Islamic Republic. They ranged in age, some older, but the loudest were in their twenties: many of Arab descent, while others were girls who could have stepped straight out of Bushwick. There was also a large banner of Khamenei himself, while one of the “mourners” carried a display of the Israeli flag in which the Star of David had been replaced with the face of Jeffrey Epstein. (Many, certainly this crop of anti-Zionists, believe the Jewish financier-pervert acted as a Mossad spy.)
Credit: Nikos Mohammadi
This was, in other words, the full expression of the Palestinian omnicause, which, since October 7, 2023, has permeated American life: from elite institutions (my own university, Columbia, among the most visible examples) to electoral politics (with “The Palestine News Network” harassing Capitol Hill interns and asking whether they are “America First or Israel First”), and even into debates about ICE and environmentalism — domestic issues reframed as part of the Palestinian struggle. It was not enough for these protesters to be merely opposed to the Iran War. Instead, the Ayatollah, a tyrannical and murderous leader, was praised because he was part of the anti-Israel “resistance”.
Clashing with pro-Israel, pro-Trump, and pro-Pahlavi counter-protesters — a mix of diasporic Iranians, Zionist Jews, and others — one activist proclaimed bluntly, and gleefully: “I don’t give a fuck about Americans. I’m Native. They’re bombing Israel and I like that.” Others on the pro-Ayatollah side shouted at the monarchist Iranians: “You’re not fucking American” and “Go back to Iran — we don’t want you here.” One Iranian woman — perhaps the only one among them — was dressed entirely in black, with only her face visible, resembling a khale chadori (female religious police). This woman screeched at her compatriots: “Saket sho!” (Be quiet!).
While the monarchists jubilantly sang “Javid Shah, Javid Shah, Javid Shah,” with placards displaying Iran’s last Shah, another declaring the Shah’s Maryland-residing son, Reza, the “king”. Their more controversial displays included a vulgar cartoon of Khamenei and a sign suggesting the pro-Ayotallah demonstrators should have been deported. They denounced the supporters of the Islamic Republic as “terrorists, terrorists,” and at times chanted: “Trump, Trump, Trump,” “Bibi, Bibi, Bibi,” and “Pahlavi bar meegardeh” (“Pahlavi will return”). That is, despite the fact that the president has on multiple occasions appeared apprehensive about that very possibility.
Credit: Nikos Mohammadi
As the sky darkened and the temperature fell, I paused between the two camps. On the one hand, activists so absorbed in a “pro-Palestinian” subculture that they seemed detached from the most basic norms of behavior. On the other, monarchists who were oblivious to the calamity of war, awaiting a mythical US-Israeli savior and the sudden return of the long-vanished Pahlavi dynasty.
It was a strange tableau of America in 2026: rival diasporas and imported grievances colliding beneath a triumphal arch built to celebrate the Republic. In a weird kind of way, the scene felt less like a protest than a staging ground for the performance of other people’s “revolutions.”
