Legacy of Imam Khomeini not just ideological, but architectural

Tehran, Qodsna –The 36th anniversary of the passing of Imam Khomeini, the great founder of the Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution, was commemorated on Wednesday.  Imam Khomeini predicted the collapse of Zionist regime and the Palestinian people’s victory in retaking their homeland.

He designated the last Friday of the holy month of Ramadan as the International Quds Day in order to open a new phase of solidarity with Palestinians in the world.

Gordon Duff, senior editor of Veterans Today and former U.S. military official and military analyst, talked with Qods News Agency (qodsna) in an exclusive interview about the impact of Imam Khomeni’s ideology and Zionist regime’s crimes and genocide against Palestinians.

The interview comes as follows:

Qodsna: On the 36th anniversary of the demise of Imam Khomeini, what was the impact of his ideology regarding all-out support for oppressed nations throughout the world?

Gordon Duff: The legacy of Imam Khomeini is not just ideological—it is architectural. It constructed an alternative grammar for power. Where others preached pragmatism in the face of oppression, Khomeini advanced a framework that demanded alignment with the dispossessed, regardless of political cost.

The significance lies not merely in what he opposed—imperialism, Zionism, Western dominance—but in what he reframed: the idea that resistance is not a tactic, but a moral constant.

The internationalization of the “oppressed-oppressor” binary was a departure from the Westphalian state logic that has long defined diplomatic calculus. In a post-colonial world, where many newly “independent” nations remained shackled by economic or military dependency, Khomeini’s narrative disrupted the performative neutrality of global institutions. He transformed solidarity from a rhetorical posture into a policy axis.

The cost was high. The ideological rigidity alienated allies and intensified hostilities. But in doing so, he forced clarity into conversations long muddied by convenience. The oppressed did not need saviors—they needed systems that refused to normalize their suffering.

Qodsna: What is the impact of Imam Khomeini’s Islamic Revolution of Iran on the Palestinian issue?

Gordon Duff: The Islamic Revolution marked a paradigmatic shift in the treatment of the Palestinian struggle. It removed the issue from the realm of political tokenism and repositioned it at the core of state identity. For the new Iranian state, Palestine was not an external crisis but an internal imperative.

By institutionalizing Quds Day and embedding anti-Zionism within the very fabric of its foreign and domestic policy, Iran reshaped the geopolitical landscape. This shift also complicated existing Arab-Israeli dynamics, exposing the inertia and duplicity of regimes that paid lip service to Palestinian liberation while maintaining covert alliances with Israel or its allies.

In practical terms, this meant state-level material and logistical support, the creation of asymmetric resistance paradigms, and a commitment to ideological continuity that could survive sanctions, isolation, and regime change attempts.

Iran's embrace of the Palestinian cause was not without complications. It reframed the conflict through a theological-political lens that has, at times, limited its universality. But it also prevented the slow erasure of Palestine from international relevance—a project that has been attempted repeatedly by both regional and global actors through normalization, fragmentation, and controlled despair.

Qodsna: How do you describe the genocidal onslaught and war crimes in Gaza?

Gordon Duff: Let us be unequivocal: what has transpired—and continues to transpire—in Gaza is a textbook case of collective punishment, ethnic cleansing, and, by several legal metrics, genocide. This is not hyperbole. It is legal precision.

The Geneva Conventions, the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, and the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide all provide criteria that match the events in Gaza with unsettling accuracy.

What distinguishes Gaza is not just the scale of devastation, but the precision of it. Infrastructure is not merely collateral—it is targeted. Medical systems are not spared—they are eliminated. Civilians are not “caught in the crossfire”—they are the crossfire.

This has been made possible not only by Israeli policy, but by a global order that enforces accountability selectively, weaponizes legal language to protect allies, and maintains moral outrage as a market commodity. When Western leaders use the vocabulary of restraint while enabling occupation, they are not being cautious—they are being complicit.

Qodsna: The Zionist regime is suffering both internal and international crisis. How do you see the future of Zionist regime?

Gordon Duff: The Zionist project was always unstable because it was premised on the violent contradiction between democratic appearance and ethnonational exclusivity. This contradiction is no longer containable.

Internally, Israel is imploding under the weight of demographic anxiety, ideological extremism, and a fractured polity that cannot decide whether it wants to be a liberal democracy or a fortress state. It cannot be both.

Externally, the narrative control that once defined Israel’s diplomatic advantage is rapidly eroding. The mythos of eternal victimhood has faltered under the weight of disproportionate force and daily documentation of apartheid conditions. From The Hague to Harvard, from Johannesburg to Ramallah, the discourse has shifted. The vocabulary of “occupation” is no longer radical—it is precise.

Does this mean collapse is imminent? No. But legitimacy is deteriorating, and for regimes built on myth, that is the beginning of the end. The future may not hold the total dismantling of the state, but it almost certainly holds a transformation—one that the architects of its founding would not recognize, and which they may not survive politically.

Final Thought:

Power is very good at defending itself. But truth has a longer half-life.

You can bomb a hospital. You can silence a witness.

But you cannot indefinitely suppress a pattern.

The world is waking up—not because it suddenly cares, but because it can no longer look away.