If Washington and Jerusalem expected the deaths of top Iranian leaders to bring about the collapse of the Islamic Republic, they have been proved wrong. The killing of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and other senior officials has not led to security forces standing down or commanders turning against the regime. Iran's war effort remains coherent, with clear structures of command and control still intact.
The assessment comes from Ilan Goldenberg, a former senior Pentagon official and ex-adviser to Vice President Kamala Harris, writing in Foreign Affairs, as "Hvylya" reports.
Goldenberg argued that killing Khamenei may have made it harder, not easier, to loosen the regime's grip on the country. Prior to the war, many analysts believed Khamenei's eventual death - he was sickly and 86 years old - could open space for internal recalibration. Not necessarily a democratic transformation, but a shift toward "more pragmatic leadership that reconsidered Iran's regional posture and nuclear ambitions with the larger aim of improving the country's economic position."
That possibility has now been foreclosed. By forcing a leadership transition under conditions of extreme duress, the war has empowered the most hard-line elements in Iran. Khamenei's son Mojtaba has taken over as supreme leader. He is a hard-liner with close ties to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps - and has lost much of his family to Israeli strikes. His appointment, Goldenberg wrote, "is not a step toward change or any softening of the regime but a guarantee of entrenchment."
The regime has also proved more resilient institutionally than Washington anticipated. Iran developed a web of institutions that have continued to function under assault. It has decentralized authority to launch attacks, allowing the military to sustain operations even as commanders get picked off. Three weeks into the U.S.-Israeli military campaign, the Iranian military has maintained consistent missile and drone strikes against targets across the region.
Previously: Oil Prices Plunge as Trump Suspends Military Strikes on Iran.