Islamist-Communist-Anti-American Alliance on Display as Four Americans Attend Khamenei’s Funeral

 

Four Americans attended the funeral for Ayatollah Khamenei and participated in “Death to America” chants. The alliance between communism, socialism, and Islamic extremism is a growing movement, with liberals supporting Hamas and cheering the Iranian regime. Photo courtesy of Visegrád 24.

U.S.-Israeli strikes killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Feb. 28, 2026. His multi-day state funeral ran July 3–9, 2026, drawing an estimated 15 to 30 million mourners across Tehran, Qom, Najaf, Karbala, and Mashhad.

His funeral was attended by four Americans: Calla Walsh, Jackson Hinkle, Christopher Helali, and Max Blumenthal, each with documented ties to communist politics, Russian or Iranian state media, and organizations critical of U.S. foreign policy: Hinkle and Helali co-founded the American Communist Party and now live in Russia; Walsh, a self-described communist and co-founder of Palestine Action US, who regularly contributes to Iranian State Media; and Blumenthal, founder of the Russia- and Iran-sympathetic outlet The Grayzone, resides in Washington, D.C.

All four have made a career out of supporting America’s enemies, raising the question of how this is even allowed and why they have not been investigated or prosecuted as foreign agents. 

Calla Walsh co-founded the U.S. wing of Palestine Action, later rebranded as Unity of Fields, after abandoning electoral Democratic politics in 2022. New Hampshire’s attorney general indicted Walsh, Sophie Ross, and Bridget Shergalis on felony charges of riot, conspiracy to commit criminal mischief, burglary, and conspiracy to commit falsifying physical evidence in connection with the Nov. 20, 2023, Elbit Systems incident.

All four defendants, including Paige Belanger, later pleaded down to misdemeanor conspiracy to commit criminal mischief and criminal trespass. They were sentenced to 12 months, with all but 60 days suspended.

NH Journal reported that communist multimillionaire James “Fergie” Chambers, heir to the Cox Communications fortune, paid cash bail for Walsh, Ross, and Shergalis. Walsh now lives in Beirut and regularly contributes to Press TV, Iran’s state broadcaster.

Jackson Hinkle, born Sept. 15, 1999, hosts Legitimate Targets and co-founded the American Communist Party, which has promoted neo-Stalinist and Xi Jinping Thought-aligned policies, according to a contemporaneous account of the party’s July 2024 Chicago launch. He describes himself as an “American Conservative Marxist-Leninist” and is widely described as a “MAGA communist.” He led a “Down with USA” chant at Khamenei’s funeral and lives in Moscow. 

Hinkle holds a registered California LLC, “Fake News Media LLC,” listing himself as “chief propagandist,” though its revenue sources are not public. He received an award, not a payment, from Mexico City’s Club de Periodistas in Nov. 2023, an outlet that has honored nearly 20 Kremlin-funded media entities. Allegations of direct payments to Hinkle from Russian and Iranian state entities circulate but are denied by Hinkle and remain unconfirmed by any primary document.

Christopher Helali sat on the American Communist Party’s founding executive committee alongside Hinkle and Haz Al-Din and serves as the party’s international secretary and high bailiff of Orange County, Vermont. He holds a Master’s in Theological Studies from the Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology but describes himself as an atheist and has never held clergy status. Therefore, “Greek Orthodox priest” is inaccurate, while “Greek Orthodox-educated” is correct. A former U.S. Army officer, he now lives primarily in Moscow.

Helali’s documented ties are organizational and participatory rather than financial. He represented the American Communist Party at a Feb. 2024 UN briefing on Russia’s World Youth Festival in Sirius and spoke at the April 2026 Sovintern inaugural event in Moscow, organized by the Russian party A Just Russia. No Treasury, FARA, or leaked document records show payments to Helali.

Max Blumenthal founded The Grayzone in 2015 and remains its editor-in-chief. He has described himself as a longtime Washington, D.C., resident and confirmed his residence there in an interview with Chinese Communist Party outlet Global Times.

The Washington Post’s June 2024 report on The Grayzone‘s Iran and Russia ties verified that one of The Grayzone‘s editors, Wyatt Reed, received thousands of dollars from Press TV for contributions made in 2020 and 2021 while also serving as a Sputnik correspondent.

Blumenthal regularly appears on Russian state television and accepted a trip to Moscow for RT’s 2015 tenth-anniversary event, where Putin was present. Neither Blumenthal nor Reed appears to have registered as a foreign agent under FARA, despite Reed’s documented payments. That is a distinct legal issue from the underlying payments themselves.

Treasury designated Press TV, Fars News, and Tasnim News as regime-controlled media outlets under Executive Order 13553 on Sept. 15, 2023. The sanctions coincided with the one-year anniversary of the death of Mahsa Amini, the young Iranian woman who died in morality police custody after being detained for allegedly violating Iran’s hijab rules. Her death sparked the nationwide “Woman, Life, Freedom” protest movement.

The sanctions targeted 18 members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Law Enforcement Forces, Iran’s prisons chief, internet censorship entities, and the three media outlets. Treasury’s designation was based on the regime’s repression of protesters and its censorship.

The Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) requires registration by anyone acting as an agent, representative, or employee of a foreign government, foreign political party, or other foreign principal, particularly when engaging in political or public relations activities at the direction of, or in coordination with, that principal. None of the four individuals named here has registered.

The public record of the four Americans who attended Khamenei’s funeral presents a pattern of activity that could fit the definition of a foreign agent. It includes repeated on-camera appearances on U.S.-sanctioned state broadcasters, speaking roles at events organized by foreign political parties, including Sovintern and the World Youth Festival, and, in Wyatt Reed’s case, documented payments from a sanctioned Iranian media outlet.

Whether that conduct satisfies FARA’s legal threshold is ultimately a question for prosecutors. Whether it warrants examination under the statute is a separate question that the publicly documented record may reasonably raise.

WATCH: Reporter Asks Trump About Communism Knocking on America’s Doorstep — President Says Communist Threat Inside America is Bigger than World War II or 9/11

 President Trump tells NTD’s Iris Tao the communist threat inside America is bigger than World War II or 9/11 and explains exactly why it’s so easy to sell… until you’re living in poverty, violence, and death.

In a powerful exchange at the NATO Summit in Ankara, Turkey, President Donald Trump delivered one of his most direct warnings yet about the communist cancer spreading inside the United States and other democracies.

NTD White House correspondent Iris Tao, who previously received warm words of support from Trump last year after being brutally mugged in Washington D.C. during the Biden years, asked the President a question millions of Americans have been waiting for. 

Irish Tao:
On communism, you’ve been issuing a wake-up call to Americans at home about the dangers of communism, and now you’re speaking on the world stage. What’s your message to people both living under communist and socialist regimes, but also people living under democracies like in Europe and America, who might not have realized how close communism has come to home?

Trump:
Look, I want to get the word out because what’s forming is communism in the country. And communism is easy to sell. I would be the greatest communist in history. I’d be right up there with Lenin. I’d be as good as anybody. You’ve got free rent for the rest of your life. What they don’t say is that you’ll be living in squalor in 12 months. You’ve got a free house. Would anybody like to have a free house? We’ll take it away from somebody, and we’ll give it to you. You’ll have murders all over the place.

Communism is a disaster. It’s been proven to be for thousands of years under different names, but it’s the same thing. It’s very important. And, you know, it’s funny—one of the reasons I do so well with Hispanic people—I set a record. Republicans, I get great numbers. The election helped me get elected in a landslide.

The Hispanics, because a lot of them came from countries that were essentially communist. Whether you call them radical socialists or communists, there’s not that much difference, but there is a little difference. When they say, “We’re social democrats,” it sounds so nice.

It’s not nice. It’s a very dangerous term. So I do talk about it, and I talk about it on TikTok, and I talk about it everywhere. I talk about it here. And you’re right, it has become international. But it’s never worked, and it’s not going to work.

What is working is the United States. So think of it: we have more jobs than we’ve ever had. People are making more money than they’ve ever made. I’m talking about workers now.

They’re making higher salaries than they’ve ever made before. It’s just the best system. It’s got flaws, but everything’s going to have a little flaw. But it’s been amazing. 

And when I watch what’s happening, and I see these lowlifes getting— I mean, they’re lowlifes. I watch them. I know good people. I know quality people. These are essentially lowlifes. And when I see what they’re talking about, I think they’re very dangerous in many ways. And I’ve said it.

Then I said, “Boy, that’s a pretty big statement.” Then I realized, you know, a couple of people said, “I think you’re probably right.” I think this country, with this thing that’s going around, is in more danger than it was during World War I or World War II.

If you talk about September 11th, if you talk about Pearl Harbor, those were big dangers. I think this is— I think the concept of us going communist, because one thing that happens when you go communist, you never come back. It never comes back. You die in squalor. You die. You die a horrible death. You die in squalor. And it gets very evil and very nasty.

WATCH:

President Trump has been relentlessly sounding this exact alarm. Just days earlier at Mount Rushmore he vowed to “vanquish communism quickly” and “send them quickly away.”

At the Faith & Freedom Coalition conference he called the far-left “hardcore, godless communists” and labeled them “the most serious threat to our country since its existence.”