The West has long nurtured the conviction that a regime dies with its ruler. On February 28, American and Israeli aircraft, in a joint operation prepared over months, killed Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei together with the chief of staff of the armed forces, the commander of the Revolutionary Guard Corps, the defense minister and Khamenei’s closest adviser, thereby erasing the command structure of the Islamic Republic in a single morning. US President Donald Trump promised to “annihilate their navy” and level Iran’s missile industry.
Across the West, and among Iranians whose January uprising had been drowned in blood only weeks earlier, an immense hope took hold. The theocracy, at last, seemed gone.
