The death of Ayatollah Ali Khameini is hardly cause for international lamentation. Since June 1989, Khamenei had led a tyrannical Iranian theocracy which ruthlessly crushed any internal dissent with the gallows, flogging, imprisonment and on-street murder. The rights of women and men have been viciously curtailed by deploying sharia law on all. Apostasy, including religious conversion from Islam to Christianity, to Bahá’í, or to agnosticism or atheism, carried a death penalty on Khameini’s gallows.

Such laws exist in other states in the Islamic world – but in the case of Iran, enforcement was vigorous. Khameini was described in tearful TV announcements of his death as the leader of world Islam.

The Islamic Republic claimed the moral right to pursue propagation of Islam throughout the world, from supporting radical and violent terrorism to issuance of fatwas, such as that which called for the killing of the now half-blinded author of The Satanic Verses, Salman Rushdie. This violent theocracy was backed by an immense security network and empowered to determine the outcome of elections by candidate exclusion. It could only end in violence.

Will Washington be happy if the Islamic Republic continues its repugnant existence in an emasculated form, like what happened in Venezuela?

Will Washington be happy if the Islamic Republic continues its repugnant existence in an emasculated form, like what happened in Venezuela?

But there remains a separate issue as to whether the system of international law has disintegrated so badly that the US can........

© The Irish Times