Death of a dictator
With the supreme leader dead, power in Iran hangs in the balance
A dramatic blow to the regime—followed by dangerous uncertainty
DURING THE 12-day war with Iran in June last year, President Donald Trump said he would spare the life of the country’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, “for now”—even as American bombers “obliterated” the country’s nuclear facilities and Israeli jets smashed its air defences and killed senior officials.
In the second act of the war, which began on February 28th, America and Israel have killed Mr Khamenei.
“One of the most evil people in History is dead,” Mr Trump declared on his Truth Social network.
Iran confirmed his death a few hours later.
The lethal strike is the bloody climax of nearly half a century of enmity between America and Iran’s clerical regime.
For decades the Islamic Republic’s devotees chanted “Death to America” and “Death to Israel”.
Now they have brought death to its leader—and to many of its most senior military officials.
On its face, it is a striking success for Mr Trump, who had long catalogued the regime’s aggression against America and its efforts to destabilise the region.
He may have dealt a mortal blow to Iran’s theocracy.
The question is what comes next.
Under the constitution a leadership council composed of the president, the chief justice and a senior cleric is meant to oversee the interregnum pending the selection of a new supreme leader.
It is unclear whether all of them survived the attacks.
Some had suggested that Mr Khamenei’s son, Mojtaba, might assume power—though there are reports that he, too, has been killed.
The surviving regime could designate a clerical successor, or perhaps a committee of them.
Yet real power has long been assumed to reside with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the regime’s praetorian guard.
The trouble is, many of its luminaries have also been eliminated.
According to Israel, those killed include Ali Shamkhani, an IRGC veteran and senior adviser to Mr Khamenei, as well as Mohammad Pakpour, the IRGC’s commander.
Even so, the system may endure.
“This is not a monarchy in which the shah is gone and you take out all of the male heirs,” notes Trita Parsi of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, a think-tank in Washington.
“This is a system—not a particularly popular system—but nevertheless one with a security establishment that is not dependent on a single person or a single family.”
The regime may have delayed formally acknowledging Mr Khamenei’s death in order to consolidate the succession.
Announcing a new leadership without at least tacit American acquiescence would place it directly in the crosshairs.
Many will worry about instability in a society battered by years of sanctions and misrule.
A country of more than 90m people, Iran is a fissile, multi-ethnic polity.
Arabs, Kurds, Azeris and Baluchis harbour varying ambitions of autonomy should a vacuum emerge.
Days before the strikes Tom Barrack, Mr Trump’s envoy, reportedly visited Iraqi Kurdistan and urged Iranian Kurds to prepare to rise up.
Memories of the violent chaos that followed the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in Iraq in 2003 and Muammar Qaddafi in Libya in 2011 remain seared in the region’s memory.
Mr Trump may hope for a Venezuela-style outcome, in which America removes the head of the regime and negotiates with the remnants for a transition to a system more amenable to American interests.
He said there were several “good candidates” to take power, but did not name them.
Some regime stalwarts are thought to have survived, among them Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, the parliamentary speaker, and Ali Larijani, his predecessor.
Yet both are steeped in the regime’s history and would struggle to win support beyond its dwindling base.
A more plausible candidate might be Hassan Rouhani.
Twice elected president, he negotiated a nuclear accord in 2015 in pursuit of détente with the West.
Should America and Israel opt instead for deeper eradication, they might support a lesser-known commander—or attempt to install Reza Pahlavi, son of the last shah.
The prince enjoys vocal backing from Israel. Mr Trump, however, has shown scant enthusiasm for a royalist restoration.
The risk for Mr Trump is that he becomes bogged down in an ill-defined military campaign to contain a weakened but still functional and hostile regime—precisely the sort of open-ended conflict in the Middle East he has long derided.
Despite videos of some people in Tehran cheering Mr Khamenei’s death, there was little sign of Iranians heeding Mr Trump’s exhortation to take to the streets.
Iran’s armed forces have fired hundreds of missiles and drones at Israel and at Arab states hosting American forces, and have announced the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly a third of the world’s seaborne oil exports pass.
Tankers are already diverting.
Last June Mr Trump joined Israel’s bombing campaign only at the end, dispatching B-2 bombers to neutralise enrichment facilities, impose a ceasefire and gain diplomatic leverage.
When Israel continued striking, he fumed that the two sides had been fighting “so long and so hard that they don’t know what the fuck they’re doing”.
This time America entered alongside Israel from the outset, determined to topple the clerical regime.
The president says the bombing will continue for “as long as necessary to achieve our objective of PEACE THROUGHOUT THE MIDDLE EAST AND, INDEED, THE WORLD!”
If the gamble fails, Mr Trump would not be the first president to see glorious early victory disappear into the sands of the Middle East.
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