On the killing of the 1-year-old granddaughter of Khamenei in the opening 'decapitation event' of the Iran War
The war on Iran began with Israeli Air Force jets flying 1,000 miles to Tehran on the morning of Saturday, Feb. 28, and dropping 30 bombs on Beit Rahbari, the compound in the middle of Tehran where the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his family lived and where many of Iran’s top military leaders were meeting.
Khamenei was killed in that opening strike along with his daughter Boshra, her husband and their 1-year-old daughter, Khamenei’s granddaughter.
I hadn’t seen this little girl’s face until yesterday when I was reading a long article by Ron Unz of The Unz Review.
In Unz’s story, he included a photograph of the child and I was struck by the sight of her and by the fact that I hadn’t seen a photo of her in any other American publication. After finishing the article and moving on to other things yesterday, I kept thinking of her little face, and found myself sitting down finally to see what I could find about her.
I could not find much. Only that her name was Zahra and that she was 14 months old.
What was little Zahra doing when the bombs dropped? Was she sitting up in a high chair having breakfast? Was she playing in the bath? Was her mother holding her? Was there music playing? What was her little life like? What would she have been had she lived and grown to be an adult woman?
According to news reports, the Israeli jets that dropped the bombs that killed Khamenei and 40 members of his family and inner circle were guided in their mission to “decapitate” Iran by intelligence provided by our CIA…the CIA that we fund with our tax dollars and that is supposed to serve American interests and reflect American values.
I can’t help wonder…When did it become the practice of the United States of America to kill the children and grandchildren of world leaders, or allow our partner-in-war to do this with our planes and bombs, and guided by our intelligence?
In what way does this represent our values?
I can’t think of any recent instance (last 70 years) of the United States or any other developed nation killing the leader of another country and his entire family — though maybe others can. The only other remotely similar event I can think of is the regicide of 1918 when the Bolsheviks killed Tsar Nicholas II and his entire family, including his crippled 13-year-old son, Alexei. They were subjected to a firing squad commanded by Yakov Yurovsky, a Russian-hating Jew, in the basement of the Ipatiev House in Ekaterinburg. The boy, Alexei, was fired upon repeatedly but for some reason refused to die, so one of the riflemen walked up to him at long last and shot him through his ear.
There was no bloodlust among the Russian people for the murder of the Tsar. In fact, when it was announced to the people of Ekaterinburg at the opera house one night that the Tsar had been killed, people left the building in shock and weeping.
It was another eight years before the Bolsheviks admitted to killing the entire Romanov family — certainly keeping it under wraps for all those years because they knew that if the world knew what they’d done, they would have had a harder time establishing themselves as the leaders of a major nation.
It’s odd to me that more isn’t being made of the killing of Khamenei’s family, including the killing of little Zahra. Actually, that’s not even it. It’s odd, and disturbing, that there is no talk of it at all, as if this is the new normal.
It just can’t be.
Here’s Grok, the artificial intelligence connected to X and developed by Elon Musk and his people, confirming the identity of Khamenei’s granddaughter who was killed on Feb. 28:
The granddaughter of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei who was killed was Zahra Mohammadi Golpayegani (also spelled Zahra Mohammadi or Zehra Mohammadi Golpayegani in some reports). She was a 14-month-old infant at the time. This occurred during joint US-Israeli airstrikes on Iran in late February 2026, which targeted Khamenei’s compound in Tehran as part of “Operation Epic Fury” amid escalating conflict. Iranian state media (including Fars News Agency) and other reports confirmed that she was killed alongside her mother (one of Khamenei’s daughters, identified in some sources as Boshra Khamenei or linked to the family of Mohammad Mohammadi Golpayegani), her father (son-in-law), and other family members. Khamenei himself was also reported killed in the same strikes. Multiple sources, including Reuters, Republic World, NDTV, and Iranian outlets, consistently name her as the grandchild killed, with her age and photo circulating on social media and news platforms following the event. No other granddaughters of Khamenei have been publicly reported as killed in recent events.
And here’s an article by Agence France-Presse, the French news service, republished by Yahoo News, summarizing which family members of Khamenei were killed in the initial strike on Feb. 28:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/khamenei-family-members-were-killed-164433361.html
Margaret, this is tragic and so much easier to accept without the story, and picture of this little innocent. One of the most basic questions about this latest war is why are humans still so barbaric. Do we only care if it is our loved one who is sacrificed. God help us.
Of course it’s very sad that a young child was killed, but you have to understand that there are thousands of civilian casualties in any war.
When you’re dealing with a terrorist state like Iran, all the old rules are off the books.
They certainly have shown no hesitation in attacking civilian targets all over the Middle East. Let me ask you a hypothetical question: If we could’ve wiped out Hitler at some point in the early years of World War II, would we stop because there might be a young child in the house?