The mythology of martyrdom: how Khamenei's Telegram channels are rewriting Iran's recent history
On 21 May 2026, Ayatollah Khamenei's Persian and Urdu-language Telegram channels published a pair of posts that tell readers exactly how the Islamic Republic wants its recent history understood. President Ebrahim Raisi, who died in a helicopter crash the previous year, was posthumously cast as a figure of sovereign dedication. The Iranian nation, meanwhile, was described as engaged in a "unique historical resistance" against "two global terrorist armies." The framing is deliberate, consistent, and worth examining on its own terms.
The posts do something more ambitious than mourning a dead president. They are constructing a founding myth in real time—one that assigns the Islamic Republic a permanent identity as the victim of foreign aggression, and its leaders as men who died in service of that resistance. Understanding this machinery of narrative-building matters because it shapes how Iranian state institutions, regional proxies, and domestic audiences process crises, sanctions, and military decisions that carry real human costs.
The anatomy of a convenient presidency
The description of Raisi's tenure as "incomplete but important" is doing significant rhetorical work. It implies that the presidency was heading somewhere meaningful before it was interrupted—not by the structural failures of a theocratic economy or the political contradictions of a sanctions-battered state, but by an external interruption. The phrase "maintaining Iran and its sovereignty" erases the specific policy failures that marked those years: the brutal suppression of the "Woman, Life, Freedom" protests in 2022–23, the acceleration of uranium enrichment despite international pressure, and an economic contraction that drove significant emigration.
None of that appears in the Khamenei posts. What appears instead is a leader whose only notable quality was fidelity to the state. That fidelity is precisely what the Islamic Republic rewards and publicises. A president who executes dissidents, enriches the Revolutionary Guard's commercial empire, and deepens ties with Russia and Hezbollah is framed as a man of the people who maintained sovereignty. The word "sovereignty" here is doing double duty: it means resistance to foreign pressure, but it also means the state's absolute authority over its own citizens without external interference in how that authority is exercised.
Two armies, one narrative
The reference to "two global terrorist armies" is the more revealing construction. The posts do not name these armies, but the context makes the target clear. The Islamic Republic has spent forty-six years building its ideological architecture around the idea that it stands between Iran—and by extension the broader Muslim world—and Western imperialism. The other army is presumably Israel, which Iran has designated as a "Zionist entity" and against which it has built a network of allied armed groups across the region.
The effect of naming two armies rather than one is to elevate the conflict from a bilateral dispute to a civilisational one. Iran is not merely in conflict with Washington and Tel Aviv; it is the frontline state in a metaphysical contest between the independent world and the forces that would subordinate it. This framing serves the IRGC's institutional interests—every regional escalation can be justified as a battle in the larger war—and it serves Khamenei's personal legitimacy, positioning him as the architect of a generational resistance rather than the head of a government with a mixed record on human rights and economic governance.
Why mythology needs a fresh anniversary
State mythologies are not static. They require regular maintenance, and anniversaries are their preferred maintenance windows. The posts from 21 May 2026 are not random communications; they are timed to the second anniversary of Raisi's death, when Iranian state media were saturated with commemorations and the IRGC conducted military ceremonies in his honour.
The mythology being constructed serves several functions simultaneously. It rehabilitates a presidency whose actual policy legacy wascheckered at best. It positions the Islamic Republic's regional interventions as defensive rather than expansionist. And it gives domestic audiences a framework for understanding hardship: sanctions, isolation, and military risk are reframed as the costs of resisting superior enemies, not the consequences of specific policy choices made by specific rulers.
The Khamenei Telegram posts offer no nuance, no competing framings, no acknowledgment that the "two terrorist armies" framing is contested by governments in Washington, Tel Aviv, and several of Iran's neighbours. That is the nature of state mythology—it does not argue; it asserts. The question for external observers is whether to treat those assertions as data points about Iranian intentions, or as internal communications whose primary audience is domestic and whose rhetorical register is calibrated for domestic consumption.
Probably both. The posts reflect genuine ideological commitments within the Islamic Republic's leadership class, and they also reflect the regime's need to maintain legitimacy in the face of economic pressure and regional tension. Reading them straight—as evidence of bad faith—is incomplete. Reading them charitably—as genuine expressions of a coherent worldview—is equally incomplete. They are instruments of governance, and their effect on Iranian citizens who consume them is as important as their effect on foreign governments that parse them.
The cost of mythological framing
There is a concrete stakes question here that goes beyond media analysis. When a state frames itself permanently as the victim of foreign aggression, it becomes structurally resistant to compromise. Every negotiation becomes a tactical retreat rather than a legitimate exchange of interests. Every sanctions relief becomes a concession extracted under duress rather than a reciprocal arrangement. The mythology makes flexibility politically toxic.
Raisi's presidency illustrated this dynamic. His foreign policy legacy—deepening the axis with Russia, accelerating nuclear enrichment, expanding the drone-and-missile programme—left Iran more isolated in 2024 than it was when he took office in 2021. The Khamenei posts present that trajectory as a success story because the metric being applied is resistance, not welfare. For the Iranian citizens who endured economic contraction and political repression during those years, the gap between the mythology and their lived experience is not a rhetorical problem. It is a governance failure that the mythology is specifically designed to obscure.
State mythology is not unique to the Islamic Republic. Every government constructs narratives about its own origins, its enemies, and its purpose. What distinguishes the Khamenei Telegram posts is the explicitness of their ambition: to assign meaning to a death, to a presidency, and to a national identity that serves the IRGC's institutional interests and Khamenei's personal legacy simultaneously. Readers encountering those posts should understand them as communications designed for a specific purpose—to make the Islamic Republic's present choices legible as continuations of a heroic past. Whether that past ever existed as described is a separate question, and one the posts are not interested in answering.
This publication's Iran coverage draws on Ayatollah Khamenei's official Telegram channels as primary wire inputs, noting that state-adjacent sources require explicit sourcing caveats and do not appear as the dominant factual frame.
Wire provenance
This editorial synthesis draws on the following public wire/social posts:
- https://t.me/Khamenei_in/11234
- https://t.me/Khamenei_in/11233
- https://t.me/Khamenei_ur/9867