Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and the Islamic regime he has led for more than 35 years now face their biggest test since the eight-year war with Iraq in the 1980s.
Since Thursday night, Iran has been bombarded by intense Israeli airstrikes that show no signs of abating anytime soon. In connection with the Israeli air campaign, the Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence service, has been operating on Iranian soil and targeting senior Iranian nuclear scientists and military officers in an attempt to shatter the Iranian military’s chain of command. Iran’s armed forces chief, the intelligence chief of the elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the supreme leader’s senior foreign policy adviser have all been killed. Khamenei himself was in Israel’s crosshairs, although President Donald Trump dissuaded the Israelis from assassinating him, fearing an even deeper escalation.
Over the last 72 hours, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has stepped up the air campaign by striking sites such as the South Pars natural gas field and refineries on the outskirts of Tehran. Netanyahu seems to be ever more enamored with going beyond Israel’s original objective, telling Fox News last weekend that regime change in Tehran could very well be the ultimate result.
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