The death of Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of Iran, was confirmed on 1 March, provoking joyous celebrations in Iran and among the Iranian diaspora as well as in Israel.

Iranians carried posters noting that the ‘47th President (Donald J Trump was) ending 47 dark years of the Islamic Republic’.

While Foreign Minister Penny Wong urged the resumption of dialogue and diplomacy, Iranian placards read, ‘No negotiation, No legitimation! Kick Mullahs out of Iran!’

The date was equally auspicious for Jews. This year, the festival of Purim falls on 2 March. It celebrates the downfall of Haman, an evil adviser to the 5th century BC Persian King, who plotted the annihilation of the Jews, but was executed, while the Jews were saved by the beautiful, wise, courageous Queen Esther, who just happened to be Jewish.

As Israelis went into the bomb shelters to sit out the inevitable Iranian retaliation to their pre-emptive strikes, many wore traditional fancy dress and danced the night away in raucous Purim parties to the strains of Gloria Gaynor’s 1978 hit, ‘I will survive’.

But not everyone was celebrating. At some Australian mosques, memorial services were held for Khamenei, although even these had a positive note as ‘condolences and congratulations’ were offered on ‘the honourable martyrdom of the pious scholar’.

NSW Premier Chris Minns rightly called the mourning of this tyrant ‘atrocious’, while the federal government scrambled to withdraw money it had lavished on the mosques in the lead-up to the last election.

It wasn’t the only taxpayer money showered on the Islamic regime. Three of Australia’s most prestigious sandstone universities have not only been home to students who have chanted the slogans of Iranian-funded Hamas, calling for the destruction of Israel from the river (Jordan) to the Mediterranean sea, but taxpayer-funded scientists have been collaborating on research that has made Iranian drones dramatically more efficient.

A University of Sydney Professor of Engineering, working alongside Iranian scientists, published research in August 2024 that used drones to make communication networks 36 per cent more efficient. Researchers at the University of Adelaide developed a ‘cutting-edge stacked intelligent meta-surface’ technology to make drones substantially more energy efficient. And at the University of NSW, a researcher collaborated with Iranian, American and British scientists to use drones as airborne base stations.

In February 2023, the Foreign Minister requested that all Australian universities cease collaboration with Iran, but they continued working with Chinese researchers on spy drones using AI, to devise a ‘dual-mode intelligent drone’ control system to maintain ‘optimal eavesdropping positions’ with a 37 per cent improvement in detection success rate and a 59 per cent enhancement in anti-jamming operations.

The Australian Research Council also funded UNSW research on camouflaging drones and minimising the risk of collisions during ‘covert military surveillance’ of moving targets, while integrated cameras and sensors greatly improved surveillance and tracking capabilities.

Yet none of this seems to have benefited Australia. When the Iranian-funded Houthis used drones and missiles to stop commercial traffic through the Red Sea in 2024 and 2025 Australia didn’t join a US-led multinational force to stop Houthi aggression because, it said, it didn’t have any anti-drone capacity.

Meanwhile, Tehran has launched at least 1,000 unmanned kamikaze drones this week, including drones that bombed an airbase near Dubai used by Australian soldiers.

This week a Sydney university spokeswoman said the drone research was exclusively civilian. Really? Does it have dual-use application to military drones? Was it used by a tyrannical regime to entrench its control over 90 million citizens? Did it enhance Iranian drone exports to Russia, which uses drones to slaughter Ukrainians in its quest to gain control of Ukraine’s gas, oil, coal and critical minerals? Is China stocking up on Australian-improved drones?

The other contribution by intellectuals has been a lot of handwringing about the illegality of the US and Israel bombing Iran. It was Iran that called the strikes ‘illegal’, a theme taken up by former prime minister and irrepressible ‘miserable ghost’ Malcolm Turnbull, who said the US attacks on Iran were ‘clearly in breach’ of the United Nations charter.

He was joined by Ben Saul, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on counter-terrorism and human rights and the Challis Chair of International Law at the University of Sydney who strongly condemned ‘the Israeli & US aggression against Iran, in violation of the most fundamental rule of international law – the ban on the use of force’ and called for ‘all responsible governments’ to ‘condemn this lawlessness from two countries who excel in shredding the international order’.

Shredding the international order? Perhaps Saul doesn’t remember the storming of the US Embassy in Tehran in 1979 when 52 Americans were held hostage for 444 days. No less an authority than the International Court of Justice ruled that Iran had violated international law, creating a legitimate cause of war. Iran crystallised its war footing with its call for ‘Death to America’, the ‘Great Satan’, with Israel damned as the ‘Little Satan’ that President Ahmadinejad swore he would wipe off the map.

Iran waged its war through terrorists it funded, bombing the US Embassy and the US Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983, killing hundreds of Americans. Since then, Iran and its proxies have continued to wage war on the US and Israel up to the present.

Turnbull said he was dismayed at Trump’s National Security Strategy, which denounced international law as ‘a cloud castle abstraction’; Turnbull characterised this as Trump ‘ridiculing’ international law, lamenting that it had led to the ‘kidnapping of the head of state of one country – Venezuela – the assassination of the head of state of another country – Iran.’

In this, Turnbull echoed the Communist party of Australia’s Graham Holton, who called the National Security Strategy ‘bad news for Australians wanting to cling to the illusion that the United States is at all interested in an “international rules-based order”.’

These views have reverberated throughout the ABC echo chamber, with John Lyons, their American editor, adding his own poisonous spin. When the Prime Minister, the Foreign Minister and the Defence Minister issued a joint statement saying Australia ‘stood with the brave people of Iran in their struggle against oppression’, Lyons accused them of spreading ‘political propaganda’ and adopting ‘Israel’s agenda’. ‘That same President (Trump) said that he obliterated Iran’s nuclear program in June-July last year. If they obliterated it, then why is it an imminent threat? … This is being driven by Israel’, Lyons ranted.

It didn’t seem to occur to Lyons that the US and Israel might share a common goal in destroying Iran’s ballistic missile capability and that even after destroying Iran’s nuclear program, the regime could access or produce enriched uranium to make a ‘dirty bomb’.

Khamenei may be gone, but for the Western intelligentsia, the song remains the same: sympathy for the devil.