The gay man who wept for the Ayatollah

Amir is one of several Iranians I spoke with over the past year. Their views varied significantly. This is his.

Amir woke up to the sharp scratch on his foot.

“It’s just thunder, be quiet.”

He shooed Filakas away.

The dalmatian didn’t; kept whining, kept scratching.

It was strange to have a thunderstorm in Tehran in midsummer, especially with so many roars. He got up and pushed the heavy curtain to a side. From his twentieth-floor apartment window he always admired the sparkly skyline of Tehran.

A clear sky.

No rain, no storm.

It took a while to understand what he was seeing, flashes above buildings followed by smoke rising. Amir put his fingers on the window and felt the vibration. His pulse quickened.

Israel had attacked.

He stumbled towards his phone, ignoring the whimpering dog and as soon as he picked it up his mum’s name flashed on the screen:

“I think they’re bombing Tehran, are you OK?” said her shaky voice.

“Yes, yes. I’m coming to you now, please go under the stairs…”

That was almost a year ago at the beginning of the 12-day war in June 2025.

Amir went into a 24/7 survival mode; a constant pulling in the gut: worry, worry and worry more.

“The circle is your parents’ home, right?”

He opened the attached screenshot to the text. It was of Google maps with a hand-drawn circle on it. “Shit” he said out loud. He never had to check what the borders of Tehran’s different municipal sections were.

Israel had issued an order to evacuate section 3 of Tehran earlier. The circle was within that section. 

A feeling began complementing his anxiety: hate.

The ground shook, and windows were blown in when Iran’s state TV broadcaster was hit. Amir could not fathom some were celebrating the attacks.

Amir prided himself in being liberal all his life. An art graduate, he always advocated for freedom, women’s rights and democracy. He’d made a social circle of his kind: gay men. Tehran’s gay scene thrived under the veil of Sharia law, which punishes homosexuality with a death penalty. It was where he felt belonged.

His father hated the Islamic Republic and wanted the Ayatollah and his regime gone. Amir’s view had always been a bottom-up change, not from above and not with bombs.

The 12-day war shifted something within him. The distress and hatred gave way to a new thought which crept into his brain and got comfortable: Was the Islamic Republic right all along? Was the government right to be sceptical about every protest?

The chilling feeling was a motivation to start reading on Iran’s recent history and other Middle East states recently affected by uprisings and war. Questions came to his mind: Had the regime not been stung repeatedly by the west, pre and post revolution?

He did not accept that human rights were of any interest to the west. Why would it be? He thought.

Amir began connecting dots he felt he had previously ignored. The past protests, while rooted in legitimate desires for freedom, now looked to him like movements hijacked by foreign powers, a playbook he felt had already shattered Syria. Through this new lens, he began to view the regime’s brutal crackdowns not just as cruelty, but a defensive reaction to keep the state from collapsing.

By January 2026, Amir was certain another war was looming. The pattern had become too obvious to him; The Islamic Republic was a beast in their eyes that needed to be brought down, one stab at a time.

When the new protests broke out, he heard the chants and screams from his home. Unlike the ones before, he did not take part in the protests, or the way he now saw them: a scheme by America. The scene was set: another stab delivered to the ‘beast’.

Few of his friends were shot during the two violent nights in January. Sina, Amir’s best gay friend, lost family members to Basiji bullets.

He knew the numbers of the dead would be high, but he did not believe what he saw on social media. He had seen the burning bins and broken shards of glass on the streets, but no bodies.

“Help is on the way” posted Donald Trump soon after.

“I can’t wait for Trump and Netanyahu to attack,” said Siamak to him over the phone, his voice shaking with anger, followed by “I am willing to fly an Israeli jet and bomb my own home, if that’s what it takes”.  Siamak was one of Amir’s best friends. His flat was where they used to gather with other gay men to play cards, smoke sheesha and gossip. How distant those nights felt now? Amir thought. To him, Siamak’s words were a testament to a society around him torn apart. Amir remembered the shattering of windows and sleepless nights under the staircase only seven months ago.

He also saw a minority who blamed the west, the regime hardliner loyalists, who saw the regime as innocent and a victim.

Amir wanted change, but also believed the agitation was caused by the west and its tools; the mainstream media.

Siamak was first of many friends who fell out with Amir.

“Once this regime falls, we’ll come for you. You’ll be executed” another friend told Amir. Amir hung up the phone, eyes wet. He had been put in a box labelled “regime loyalist” and a judgement passed.

And then the internet was stopped by the government. Amir was grateful. In his view it was the right move by the regime. Until then, each day videos and pictures of the January protests on social media tormented him. They also made friends like Siamak become extreme, increasingly desperate for a military intervention. In Amir’s view, the quiet the digital blackout offered, not only restored some sanity in him, but also calmed Siamak’s fury somewhat.

It happened on 28^th of February 2026, just as Amir expected.

America and Israel attacked Iran.

The Supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, was killed on the first day.

The shaking of the ground, the vibration of windows and a whimpering dog were not mistaken for a thunderstorm this time round. Amir had already a bag packed and ready. He picked up his parents the same morning and left Tehran.

When Khamenei’s death was announced five days later, Amir, once a vocal opposer to Khamenei, found himself grief-stricken. He cried for the late Ayatollah, seeing him as an old man murdered. In his mind, the Ayatollah may have been right all along, and he blinded to the truth.

“They have made him eternal, a martyr” said his dad as he watched the news. Amir was noticing a change he deemed impossible in his dad too.

Not far from his home, Siamak leapt in joy as the death of the Ayatollah was announced.

Then came news of deaths of military and other regime’s top-ranking people under Israeli and American bombs, day after day. Amir’s sadness turned into fury and humiliation.

“How is this allowed?” he thought “How can a foreign power decide to kill leaders of a country with no consequence?”

He saw many people who were once strong opponents to the regime feeling the same way as him. A shift had begun to take place.

“…for your own safety, withdraw from the streets and remain in your homes.” Posted Reza Pahlavi, late Shah’s son, and along with Netanyahu and Trump, he urged people to wait for their signal to ‘take their country back’.

“No one will come out for you” he thought as he gritted his teeth.

“A civilisation will end tonight…” posted Trump.

From thereon, any move by the regime which could be seen as a middle finger to Trump or Pahlavi was a triumph in Amir’s eye. The choosing of Khamenei’s son, Mojtaba as the new supreme leader, though not democratic, was exactly that in his view.

The democracy he fought for, the change he wanted to achieve could take a backseat for now.

Amir joined the nighttime protests against the war, next to hardline regime supporters, listening to revolutionary anthems played from large speakers. He felt a camaraderie with people who’d tut at his tight t-shirts and spiky hair, had it not been war times. He found himself leaping to regime’s anthems instead of Madonna’s at Siamak’s flat.

Sina, who paid a personal toll during January protests, also joined Amir at the nighttime pro-regime rallies.

Sina had taken it a step further and was angry with the regime agreeing to ceasefire. He hated Shah’s son.

A master poker player, Sina used to cruise Tehran’s parks with his trans friends, smoked weed and lived care-free. He transformed to someone who now stood shoulder to shoulder with bearded men with a prayer stone mark on their forehead and chanted “Long live Iran”.

The war is now over, and from Amir’s point of view, Iran was victorious. This makes him happy.

But the joy feels fragile. The air still feels heavy and the threat of a war still hanging above. 

He does not want another war and Iran to become Syria. Amir does not want to be homeless, poor and a refugee.

He believes war has changed many of people’s views. He feels Trump’s straight-talking, no-politics social media rants have helped people see what he now considers the reality, exposing what he views as a Western 'Deep State' agenda.

Amir, Sina and Siamak are all gay men living in Iran. Amir does not blame the regime for the law where there is a death penalty for homosexuality. He feels the society who accepts the law should change; a homophobia ingrained in it. He believes acceptance will be achievable and with that, the law will be removed. He feels if the real death threat from above stopped, he can work with the rest, go back to fighting for democracy, his way.

Amir’s plan is simple, he will still be gay, under the radar if needed. Yet, he has found a new belonging amongst people he could not be more different from. He will still try to push for a slow change.

He will mend his relationship with his gay friends once the heat of the war cools down. He knows though Siamak and the likes of him will be upset, they will be friends again, that the evening gatherings will resume. Life must go on.

Meanwhile he hopes that Iran becomes a powerful regional force that it deters countries like Israel and America to attack her, so that they leave her be. He hopes he will never have to look through his window and see his city is burning.