The reported killing of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is an attempt by the United States and Israel to cause the Iranian regime to “implode”, an analyst said on Saturday (Feb 28).
The US and Israel launched the most ambitious attack on Iran in decades on Saturday, and US President Donald Trump and Israel said Khamenei had been killed in the operation.
Israel, in particular, placed great importance on the killing of Khamenei, said Trita Parsi of the Quincy Institute in Washington.
Israel believed it would “kill an era of 47 years in which this Islamic Republic has been in place” in Iran, he said.
“Even if the Republic or the theocracy survives, the symbolism of Khamenei being assassinated is something that the Israelis have argued is very, very important.”
WHAT DOES THE US WANT?
Trump, in his social media post on Saturday, called Khamenei’s apparent killing “the single greatest chance for the Iranian people to take back their country”.
Khamenei’s body has been found, a senior Israeli official told Reuters. Iranian news agencies Tasnim and Mehr, however, had reported that the supreme leader was “steadfast and firm in commanding the field”.
“I think the hope on the American and Israeli side is that the killing of the supreme leader, the impact it will have on the military side, is essentially that the regime as a whole moves much closer towards collapse and then regime implosion, and that that will then have an implication for the military performance,” said Parsi.
“It’s not that the supreme leader himself was the ultimate decision-maker on tactical and strategic decisions at this point, but rather that it will be a critical move towards imploding the regime,” he added.
Parsi added: “I think the hope on the side of the United States is either that the population would rise up and see this as an opportunity to get rid of the theocracy altogether. Or that it will lead to a scenario in which new elements take over the same system.”
“But that they will be much more amenable to the US. than what the system was under the supreme leader,” he said, adding that he did not find that scenario “very likely”.
“The reason for that is there was a very clear and very attractive deal on the table for Trump, in which he had achieved far more than what Iranians were willing to offer Obama. He could easily have declared victory,” said Parsi.
“Instead, he chose war because it seems like his hope is to actually get regime change, surrender, and humiliation. So the next iteration of leadership that would come from the same security apparatus is, to the best of my assessment, not more inclined to accept that type of a humiliating surrender.”
Eyal Mayroz, senior lecturer at the University of Sydney, told CNA that the question of regime change is still hanging very much in the air.
“I am sceptical about the possibility of making a regime change from the air, neither Israel nor the Americans will put boots on the ground, and so much depends on the situation within Iran, not so much the people of Iran as the maybe some elements within the Revolutionary Guard that may want to make some change,” he said.
“This is again a very tall order and unclear,” he said.
“My feeling is that by emphasising, from the first moment that they are doing it to help the people of Iran change the regime, they could then later on, use it to say, we’ve done our part. If it didn’t work, then it’s because the Iranians didn’t do theirs. And so this will provide them some kind of an exit strategy,” said Mayroz.
