Subhead:One Iranian Australian hails what he, and thousands of others celebrating on Melbourne’s streets, hope is the terror regime’s end.# YouTube-embed:_98JvKn0ttw As thousands of Iranian Australians flooded Melbourne’s CBD in a sea of flags, drums and dancing, it was hard not to notice that the celebration carried the weight of personal grief ... and fierce hope. One Iranian-Australian I talked to told me that many in his community weren’t simply marking the assassination of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in targeted U.S. and Israeli strikes. He was thinking about six friends he says never made it out of Iran’s latest wave of unrest. “I’ve lost six friends,” he told me. “I wish they could be here today to see this.” NB-embed:iranians_in_melbourne_celebrate_khamenei_s_downfall The man, who lived in Iran for more than two decades before moving to Australia 11 years ago, had returned only weeks earlier during nationwide protests. He told me that the uprising was absolutely organic and not manufactured by foreign powers. “When I was there, I saw something interesting. Something was growing up, something was building up. People were not happy,” he said. What began as frustration quickly evolved into open defiance. According to him, the demonstrations drew in people from all walks of life and even religious women in full hijab. “They said we don’t want them, we want them gone.” As night fell during those protests, the tone shifted dramatically. “About nine, half past nine we started hearing bullets,” he recalled. By midnight, “the whole internet was shut down”.