While the Iranian regime organizes pharaonic funeral ceremonies for Ayatollah Khamenei, the reality on the ground tells a very different story: a nation brought to its knees, crushed by a collapsing economy and relentless repression. A Mourning Imposed as Propaganda The celebrations taking place across Iran for days—from Tehran to Qom and as far as Najaf and Karbala—represent a cruel paradox. In one of the darkest chapters of Iranian history, marked by galloping inflation, widespread poverty, and the still-open wounds of the recent conflict—which left behind damaged cities, an unstable power grid, paralyzed trade routes, broken supply chains, and a productive system strangled by the effects of war—the regime has chosen to allocate colossal budgets for the funeral of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed on February 28th. As Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi has pointed out, the question haunting the people is not where the former Supreme Leader will be laid to rest but the exorb...
Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York—name a Northeastern state, and you will be naming a place where there is no death penalty. New Hampshire was the latest to join the list in 2019. But there is one glaring omission. Pennsylvania. In the Keystone State, capital punishment is legal, even though no one has been executed there since 1999. The state exists in a kind of death penalty limbo, not abolishing it but unable or unwilling to carry out death sentences. Recent polls suggest that the residents of Pennsylvania are ready to break the logjam. 58% now favor a life sentence rather than the death penalty for people convicted of murder.