The 1979 Iranian revolution was a hinge point in history that dramatically set back the values that progressives claim to care about, including women’s rights, gay rights, freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and rationalism in public policy. In “Persepolis,” Marjane Satrapi recalls the story of Niloufar, an 18-year-old communist activist sentenced to death by the clerical regime. The religious jurists have no problem with the death penalty for Niloufar, but they worry that as a virgin she may go to heaven. So they arrange for her to be raped by a prison guard before her execution. Later the authorities send Niloufar’s family a small dowry to commemorate this “marriage.” Ali Khamenei led this murderous medieval regime for nearly forty years. This is a regime that beat women for showing their hair and publicly hanged gays from cranes. It’s a regime that ignored the needs of its own people to fund jihadist groups in, among other places, Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen and the Palestinian Territories. It’s a regime that committed murder in dozens of countries, including Germany, France, India, Australia, Argentina and Saudi Arabia. Just weeks ago, it slaughtered thousands—possibly tens of thousands—of its own citizens for protesting its repressive policies. Because the Iranian revolution offered a template for Islamist rule, albeit a Shia variant crafted by Ayatollah Khomeini, Islamists of all stripes took inspiration from it. Few countries adopted the extreme measures favored by the mullahs of Iran, but the revolution’s malign influence was felt from Morocco to Mindanao. In the 1980s it also sparked a theological arms race with Saudi Arabia, which spread its own regressive brand of Islamism around the world. Progressives in democratic countries who mourn the death of Khamenei come in different flavors. Some are simply Islamists or Islamist adjacent. Their ideology conceals the deeper religious passions that motivate them. Others are so blinded by their hatred of America and Israel that they reflexively oppose any action by them. Yet others are simply so ignorant of the nature of the Iranian regime that they can’t see the absurdity of comparing Khamenei with Dumbledore from Harry Potter. But all of these people have one thing in common. They spit on the suffering of the talented Iranian people who have had to endure nearly 50 years of brutal clerical rule.