On July 11, one day after burying his father, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard released a fresh written statement in the name of Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei. It vowed to avenge the blood of Ali Khamenei and of every martyr of the two wars, and it warned the killers they would carry the dream of a peaceful death in their beds to their graves. It reached wider still, declaring that free people across the world would soon each take up part of what it called a divine mission of revenge.  The tone was fierce, sweeping, and precise.

And then one line, offered almost in passing. This matter, the statement said, “does not depend upon my presence,” nor on that of any other official. Read it again, because the regime has just conceded half of my case. No one is demanding his presence. No one needs him to stand in a square or ride in a motorcade, and the vengeance, the succession, and the state can all move forward without his body in view. Granted. Yet a cause pressed in his name still rests on the one thing the statement steps around. It........

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