Gee, what a nice old man he was…
The New York Times ignited a broad backlash over its obituary headline for Iran’s late supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, over the weekend.
The headline — “Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Hard-Line Cleric Who Made Iran a Regional Power, Is Dead at 86” — drew immediate criticism on social media and from conservative commentators who argued the framing underplayed the Islamist tyrant’s role in sponsoring terrorism, crushing dissent, and elevating Iran’s threat to the U.S. and its allies.
The accompanying obituary included language describing Khamenei as “avuncular and magnanimous,” noting his spectacles, traditional robes, and scholarly pursuits, phrasing that many on the right saw as tone-deaf at best and sanitizing at worst.
Montana Republican Sen. Tim Sheehy offered an alternative headline on X, mocking the newspaper’s choice and reflecting the GOP view that legacy media too often soft-pedal brutal adversaries.
Fox News contributor Joe Concha reacted with exasperation: “I give up…,” while Washington Post columnist Marc Thiessen wrote, “You can’t be serious.”
News Nation’s Batya Ungar-Sargon remarked, “You don’t have the media enough,” and Heritage Foundation fellow Jason Bedrick bluntly declared, “The NYT is garbage.”
Critics argued that Khamenei’s record was defined not by avuncular scholarship but by ruthless authoritarianism — overseeing crackdowns on protests, such as those in 2022 and January 2026 that left many dead, and directing support for Iran’s militant proxies across the Middle East.
In response to the criticism, The Times’ communications team defended the obituary’s approach in a post on X, arguing that the paper’s obituaries “report and reflect lives in full, illuminating why, in our judgment, they were significant” and include “newsworthy details” without being “dishonest.”
The Times’s obituaries report and reflect lives in full, illuminating why, in our judgment, they were significant. We fairly and accurately include the newsworthy details of each life and death, and don't treat them dishonestly to score points like you’re trying to do here.
— NYTimes Communications (@NYTimesPR) March 1, 2026
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