This is one way to get a point across, and evade network censors in the process.
An Australian television anchor whose family fled Iran more than four decades ago offered a sendoff to Iranian “Supreme Leader” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in language he could understand.
Too bad Khameini was no longer alive to hear it, after dying in the opening hours of the U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran Saturday.
In a commentary broadcast Saturday on the Sky News Australia program “Outsiders,” television personality Rita Panahi, an influential conservative voice in her country’s media, spoke mostly in English, but returned to her native Persian tongue, generally known as Farsi, to deliver the hammer blow about a man who’d been killed.
BREAKING: Sky News Australia anchor just went FULL VIRAL worldwide with her EPIC live farewell to the dead Ayatollah Khamenei, straight in Persian!
She looked right into the camera and unloaded:
“A message to the late Supreme Leader: You son of a b*tch, BURN IN HELL!” pic.twitter.com/ZoO3NzmPvA
— Gunther Eagleman™ (@GuntherEagleman) March 1, 2026
“You son of a b***, shame on you, burn in hell!” she said, according to the New York Post.
(Sky News Australia and the New York Post are both ultimately owned by News Corp, the international media empire founded by conservative magnate Rupert Murdoch.)
It wasn’t clear whether Panahi’s co-hosts on the program knew what the foreign-language words meant — their reaction comes across as far too jovial for the words that had just been uttered.
But it was clear from the social media reaction that Pahati had touched a nerve.
Yes, that is how we all feel! Great job she is great by the way I love watching her.
— Robyn O’Donnell (@RobynDODonnell) March 1, 2026
She has waited many years to use her lovely Persian language to express what is on all of our minds today.
— Jill Swigert (@Premisecheck) March 1, 2026
Dear mainstream media,
This is how it’s done.
Well done, @RitaPanahi @TRobinsonNewEra @MahyarTousi— Adam Todd (@AdamTod41756705) March 1, 2026
Australia’s government is almost a parody of leftism (one trait it shares with its Mother Country back in the U.K.) That makes voices like Panahi especially important. As a woman who was born in the United States, who lived in Iran as a child, and whose family had to flee the Islamic Republic because of its theocratic dictatorship, she has a view of events there outside the experience of most Australians — and most Westerners.
She’s also showing no signs of backing down. In a post on the social media platform X published later on Saturday, she wrote only that she should have added another word to her comment:
“Bi-Sharaf” — a word meaning “disgraceful” that has particular resonance in Farsi.
I should’ve added a “bisharaf” in there too. https://t.co/A1JQTBGO18
— Rita Panahi (@RitaPanahi) March 2, 2026
Events in Iran and the Middle East as a whole have been moving quickly since the combined U.S.-Israel attacks on the Islamic Republic began Saturday.
And where the conflict goes next is an open question.
But Panahi’s disgusted epitaph to the ayatollah is already etched in the history of the conflict.
We felt every word you said in Persian, THANK YOU
— Mahboobeh Rajabi (@MahboobehMCR) March 2, 2026
“We felt every word you said in Persian,” one X user of apparently Iranian heritage wrote. “THANK YOU.”
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