Protests and celebrations erupted across D.C. on Saturday after the United States and Israel launched strikes on Iran that killed its supreme leader, with demonstrators divided between fear of escalating U.S. involvement in the region and hope for an end to repression in the country.
Demonstrators near the White House condemned the operation as a move by the U.S. government to impose another “endless war” in the Middle East, drawing parallels to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and accused President Donald Trump of plunging the military into war without Congressional approval. Meanwhile, crowds in Georgetown and at the World War I Memorial celebrated the death of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, seeing the action as a potential turning point against a repressive regime responsible for the deaths of thousands of protesters over the last month and widespread crackdowns on civil liberties.
“All organizations from across the DMV have come out today, a united action to stand firmly against Trump’s genocidal attempts against Iran. We say, ‘No war with Iran,’” Merawi Gerima, an organizer with the D.C. Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression and member of the D.C. Against Trump Agenda Coalition, said at a rally rebuking the strikes.
The United States and Israel launched a major campaign of strikes early Saturday targeting Iranian government and military sites — including locations in and around Tehran — after President Donald Trump said U.S. intelligence showed Iran was preparing attacks on American targets overseas and moved to “defend the American people.”
The strikes, which the Department of Defense has dubbed “Operation Epic Fury,” continued through the day as Iranian forces launched retaliatory strikes, hitting U.S. bases and infrastructure in countries across the Middle East. Iranian leaders said the strikes had killed over 200 people as of Sunday night, including senior leadership, and U.S. officials confirmed at least three U.S. troops’ deaths as of Sunday morning.
Outside of the White House and Lafayette Park — which Trump has fenced off for renovations since January — Gerima and his fellow organizers stood on the back of a white pickup truck, leading the crowd in chants and inviting speakers to address the group of roughly 200 demonstrators. Gerima said the organizers planned the protest within hours after U.S. and Israeli missiles hit Iran early Saturday morning, viewing the move as an attempt to further entrench the U.S. military in the Middle East and destabilize the region.
The crowd continuously grew during the White House rally, peaking at over 400 protesters when the group began marching to the State Department. Groups from protests in other parts of D.C., like March 4 Democracy, joined the crowd outside the White House as well.
Demonstrations celebrating the death of Khamenei also cropped up throughout D.C., including on M Street and Wisconsin Avenue in Georgetown and at the World War I Memorial near the White House. Hundreds of people at both locations chanted “USA” and “Thank you President Trump,” waving Iranian, U.S. and Israeli flags.
Iranian state media confirmed the death of Ayatollah, the country’s second supreme leader, Saturday evening. Trump also announced Khamenei’s death in a Truth Social post, adding that the strikes on Iran would continue “uninterrupted” for the rest of the week or “as long as necessary” to achieve peace in the Middle East.
Khamenei, who Trump called one of the “most evil people in history,” has led Iran as the country’s supreme leader since 1989, cementing the Islamic Republic’s staunch Islamist and anti-Western views. He replaced Ruhollah Khomeini, Iran’s first supreme leader and architect of the 1979 Iranian Revolution, only a decade after Khomeini’s revolution brought Islamic law to the country and sewed animosity between Iran and the United States.
The end of Khamenei’s rule was marred by domestic and global outrage over his crackdown on anti-government protests, which many referred to as the bloodiest crackdown on dissent in the country since the 1979 revolution.
A speaker outside the White House, who introduced herself as Mimi from the DMV Palestinian Youth Movement, said the recent attacks on Iran signal a realignment of American force in the Middle East, not a contained confrontation. She said people should expect continued excavations through the region at the hands of the United States and Israel.
“Today, I want you to be as loud as you possibly can against this attempt to destabilize the Middle East,” Mimi said.
Katie, a representative of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization — a nationwide group supporting socialism — who did not share her last name, told the group that Trump’s presidency so far has been “ironic” as he’s billed himself as an “anti-war president” but has launched multiple military operations aimed at regime change since the start of his second term, including his January capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
“This president doesn’t know the meaning of anti-war,” Katie said. “All he knows is war.”
Iran had been gripped by protests since late December until Khamenei and the Iranian government forcefully cracked down in mid-January, arresting and killing protesters. As the country looks to name its next supreme leader, an interim government consisting of the country’s president, judiciary chief and a member of the Guardian Council — an Islamic legal body that vets Iran’s laws to ensure they’re in line with Islamic law — is leading Iran.
U.S. military forces had been steadily building up throughout the Middle East for the past few weeks as multiple rounds of renewed talks between Iran and the United States over Iran’s nuclear program failed to result in any agreement.
The strikes come eight months after Trump struck three nuclear sites in Iran in an attempt to cripple the country’s nuclear infrastructure, the United States’ only intervention in the 12-day war between Israel and Iran last summer.
The protest continued marching along E Street on Saturday afternoon, passing the Elliott School of International Affairs and forcing Metropolitan Police Department cruisers to enact rolling road closures in the area around the protest, though officials did not issue any GW Alerts.
Outside the State Department, another member of PYM, who identified herself as Sarah to the crowd, said the strikes are dragging the Middle East as a whole into “another endless war.”
“This is yet another chapter in the long U.S. history of intervention in the Middle East that has destabilized our homeland and killed our people,” Sarah said.
Sarah also condemned strikes that hit civilian targets in Iran, like a strike that hit an elementary school in the southern Iranian town of Minab, killing dozens of people, including children.
“This reminds us of the Israeli attacks in Gaza, in Libya, in Yemen, where they murder our students, our journalists, our doctors, with the hopes of extinguishing and fragmenting our people and preventing any resistance to genocide and their hegemony in the Middle East,” they said.
Hassan, a member of the D.C. chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, called the attacks unconstitutional, adding that Trump’s ordering of U.S. strikes on Iran violated the Constitution’s provisions granting Congress the sole power to declare war. Both chambers of Congress are set to debate and vote on war powers resolutions this week, which have the potential to limit Trump’s power to continue carrying out strikes in Iran.
“But as a result of these attacks, under Chapter VII, Article 51, of the United Nations Charter, Iran has the right to defend itself,” Hassan said.
By the time the protest neared its conclusion, the crowd had dwindled to about 50 protesters. MPD cruisers kept 23rd Street from the Institute of Peace up to E Street and Virginia Avenue blocked off.
Gerima delivered a final message to the crowd shortly before the protest disbanded, thanking the group for attending and encouraging attendees to join organizations, like the D.C. Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression.
The protest ended at 5 p.m. outside the State Department, three hours after it kicked off at the White House.
