Iran’s tradition of martyrdom is key to understanding this conflict
One word stood out in the florid and overwrought announcement of the death of Iran’s Supreme Leader by a tearful state-television newsreader on 1 March: ‘Leader and Imam of the Muslims, His Eminence Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Hosseini Khamenei, on the path of upholding the exaltation of the sacred sanctuary of the Islamic Republic of Iran, drank the sweet, pure draft of martyrdom and joined the Supreme Heavenly Kingdom.’ The dreaded ‘m’ word – martyrdom – immediately takes anyone familiar with Muslim history back to a legendary 7th-century battlefield in central Iraq. In 680, the Prophet Muhammad’s grandson Husayn ibn Ali – regarded as the third Shia imam – faced a
