Post #5246

☢️ Khamenei Is Dead. Trump and Netanyahu Just Opened the Succession War. Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei — the man who ran the Islamic Republic since 1989 — is now officially a casualty of the U.S.–Israel air campaign. A senior Israeli official says Khamenei’s body has been found and his death confirmed after strikes that smashed targets in Tehran and across at least nine Iranian cities. For nearly four decades, Khamenei sat on top of every lever of power in Iran: government, military, judiciary, Revolutionary Guard, and a regional militia network built to outlast the U.S., Israel and the Sunni monarchies across the Gulf. Under him, Iran built a nuclear program that terrified its neighbors, armed proxies from Lebanon to Yemen, and crushed uprisings at home, including the January protests this year that were put down at the cost of thousands of lives. But by the time the bombs fell this weekend, he was ruling from a bunker. Last June, joint Israeli‑U.S. strikes killed several of his closest lieutenants and senior Guard commanders and wrecked key nuclear and missile sites, forcing him into hiding and hollowing out his inner circle. Saturday’s operation finished the job physically — just as Iran was already weakened by sanctions, mass unrest, and the fallout from Hamas’s 7 October 2023 attack, which dragged Tehran into a grinding, losing confrontation by proxy. Trump is selling Khamenei’s death as an opportunity for “freedom” and a once‑in‑a‑generation chance for Iranians to topple their rulers; Netanyahu is promising to keep striking “as long as needed.” Iran has already answered with missile volleys at Israel and at least seven Arab states, and panic is spreading as people flee Iranian cities and shipping through the Strait of Hormuz seizes up. The regime Khamenei built was designed to survive his death: a system of clerics, councils, Guards and patronage networks meant to plug in a new supreme leader the moment the old one disappears. Killing the man doesn’t kill the machine. It just guarantees that the struggle over who controls it will now play out under air raids, regional missile fire, and a U.S. president openly promising to help pick the ending. #Iran#Khamenei#Trump#Israel#war#regimeChange#StraitOfHormuz 📱American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸