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The 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).
Iranian state media confirmed on Sunday that Khamenei has been killed. It had also reported that Khamenei's daughter, grandchild, daughter-in-law and son-in-law were killed in the strikes.
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".
“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.
WHAT COULD HAPPEN NEXT?
Trita Parsi said that if Khamenei had indeed been killed, it could provoke a response from neighbouring countries with Shia Muslim populations, like Iraq, the UAE, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.
Khamenei was not just the de facto head of state; he was also a religious figure who had a certain importance in the world of Shia Islam, he said, noting that the supreme leader has followers in Lebanon, in Iraq, in Bahrain, in Saudi, in the UAE, in Pakistan and many other countries.
"And there can be, there is a risk of major escalation in those areas precisely because of this," he added.
“I think the most likely scenario here, at least in the short term, is that you will see this being responded to by the Iranians violating another self-imposed red line."
Parsi noted that in the first 24 hours, the Iranians attacked US Bases in all Gulf states except for Oman - something that they had not done before.
He expects an additional escalation from the Iranian side, at least in the short term.
Mayroz called the retaliatory strikes "pre-planned".
"I think the Iranians have learned from the previous round to, if you like, to decentralise their decision making, decentralise their operations, and so we saw very quickly the missiles being fired back.
Iran called the strikes on it unprovoked and illegal and responded with missiles fired at Israel and at least seven other countries, including Gulf states that host US bases.
WHO COULD SUCCEED KHAMENEI
The US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had previously assessed that Khamenei could be replaced by hardline figures from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), two sources briefed on the intelligence said.
“I think we have to be very frank that the Iranians have kept this very close to their chest and as a result we do not know," said Parsi.
The names that are out there in the public may not at all be the names that have been decided, he added.
"I think that this was decided months ago as a result of the June war," said Parsi.
"And also, it's not clear whether it would be a single individual replacing or whether it would be a council that would replace it per the Iranian constitution,” he said.
Trump, who made the biggest foreign-policy gamble of his presidency after campaigning for reelection as a "peace president", said the strikes against Iran were aimed at ending a decades-long threat from Iran and ensuring it could not develop a nuclear weapon.
But the fact that negotiations with the US were ongoing and that Iran appears to have made major concessions on its nuclear programme, Parsi said, could mean that whoever ends up in charge of Iran will be less willing to be conciliatory.
