Astral Codex Ten

Ayatollah

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Ayatollah

Article

Ayatollah is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between October 24, 2025 and March 03, 2026. The archive places it in contexts such as “Ayatollah fans to reinterpret them as the Ayatollah”; “America hoped that killing the Ayatollah would provoke mass protests”. It most often appears alongside Iran, Trump, United States.

Metadata

  • Category: Concepts
  • Mention count: 2
  • Issue count: 2
  • First seen: October 24, 2025
  • Last seen: March 03, 2026

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

Highlights From The Comments On Fatima
October 24, 2025 · Original source
A rumour was spread that an old, pious lady from the holy city of Qom found a hair of the prophet in her Koran. On the same evening she had an epiphany from which she learned that the devout believer would see the face of Ayatollah Khomeini during the next full moon. It is said that the story was spread all over Iran in less than a day. At the awaited day of 27 November [1978], millions of people received the moon with cheers, actually recognized the image of Ayatollah Khomeini and shouted “āllāhu akbar” from the rooftops of their houses – which became an established sign of political disobedience in the subsequent days and weeks. The emotional change transported through this mass phenomenon was exceptional: The people of Iran “experienced a festive moment that sharply contrasted with the rest of that bleak bitterly cold and bloody autumn. Tears of joy were shed and huge quantities of sweets and fruits were consumed as millions of people jumped for joy, shouting ‘I’ve seen the Imam in the moon.’”
While it was still unclear how the leading clerics or Ayatollah Khomeini himself would react to this event, it was not only being celebrated by local clerics in thousands of mosques, but also secularists and communist activists, who were keen to confirm the Ayatollah’s appearance in the moon. As a matter of fact, even the Soviet-sponsored journal of the communist Tūdeh-Party “Navīd” wrote: “Our toiling masses, fighting against world-devouring Imperialism headed by the blood-sucking United States, have seen the face of their beloved Imam and leader, Khomeini the Breaker of Idols, in the moon. A few pipsqueaks cannot deny what a whole nation has seen with its own eyes.”
Regrettably, it cannot easily be ascertained how or whether at all Khomeini responded to this episode soon after it occurred; due to the general strike in Iran, no public discourses can be found in the newspapers. However, the belief that Khomeini’s face could be seen in the moon and “that only miscreants and bastards would fail to see” it became so widely held that it demanded response at least two months later when history repeated itself. On 13 January, just when the first rumours of the Shah’s imminent abscondence and the Ayatollah’s return to Iran were being spread by the newspapers, the “people spoke of an Islamic government starting the following day, and that evening people were in the streets, ecstatic at what they saw: Khomeini’s face appearing on the moon”. Allegedly, this time some people in the province of Hamadan decided to sacrifice a sheep in order to celebrate this amazing phenomenon.
Mantic Monday: Groundhog Day
March 03, 2026 · Original source
I found this Marginal Revolution post helpful in making sense of the markets’ view on Iran. America hoped that killing the Ayatollah would provoke mass protests and make the regime collapse. That doesn’t seem to have happened, and the regime seems ready to appoint a new Supreme Leader and keep going. America’s strategy will be to keep killing as many higher-ups as possible and bombing Iranian military sites, in the hopes that eventually the populace rises up or the remaining ayatollahs fail to hash out a succession plan. Iran’s strategy will be to just try to hold on, and cause enough pain for America and its allies that the US goes away sooner rather than later. Most likely America will either win or give up within a month, but there’s a long tail of outcomes with continued conflict until potentially as late as next year.
Inline links: this Marginal Revolution