Would Israel try to kill Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and what would it mean for the region?

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not exclude the murderous Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the 86 -year -old supreme chief Iranian, the figurehead of what he calls an “existential” threat to Israel. Netanyahu clearly indicated that Israel would like to see, and even to precipitate a change of regime in Iran, which is governed by a hard theocratic government since the Islamic Revolution of 1979.

Friday, after ordering the first Attacks against Iranian nuclear sitesNetanyahu said: “Israel’s fight is not against the Iranian people. Our fight is against the murderous Islamic regime that oppresses you and impoverished you.”

He urged the people of Iran “to unite around their flag and their historical heritage, defending your freedom from the evil and oppressive regime,” adding: “It is your opportunity to defend you and let your voices be heard”.

Questioned by ABC News in an interview broadcast on Monday if Israel would try to kill Khamenei, Netanyahu only said that his country “did what we have to do”.

He rejected the suggestions that such a decision would be an escalation, however, saying: “It will not degenerate the conflict, it will end the conflict.”

The strikes of Israel struck the inner circle of Khamenei

“I imagine that the supreme chief is currently unable to sleep and worries if he will be alive or not,” Holly Dagres, regional expert and senior member of the Washington Institute Think Tank on Monday in Washington, DC, CBS News.

The current strikes in Israel have killed several of the main generals and advisers in Iranian security at Ayatollah, a blow to its inner circle, which, according to the Reuters news agency, includes only 15 to 20 loyalists of trust. The dead include the commander -in -chief of the Iranian elite removal guards Hossein Salami, the head of the Iranian ballistic missile program Amir Ali Hajizadeh and the spy chief Mohammad Kazemi.

On Tuesday, the Israeli army boasted of killing the tapped man to replace the chief of staff of the Iranian army, only four days after having killed his predecessor in his first strike.

“We eliminated Ali Shadmani, the chief of staff of the war, the most senior military commander of the Iranian regime,” the Israeli military spokesman, General Brigadier, was said to Defrin on Tuesday. “It was eliminated at the headquarters of the Iranian regime in the heart of Tehran. Shadmani was the chief of staff of the Armed Forces of the Iranian regime and the closest man to the Iranian leader Khamenei. He was appointed to replace the previous personnel chief, which we also launched in the opening blow of the operation. He only succeeded for 4 days.”

But even if Israel was to kill Ayatollah himself, Dagres said that Iran’s office regime had a process established to keep the government stable.

Iran is not managed by “a man and some generals”

“The thing with the Islamic Republic is that it is not only a man and some generals,” Dagres at CBS News told. “It is a system or a device that has been considered very largely. The Islamic Republic has something that is similar to the Cardinal College (of the Vatican) – the assembly of experts, and they actually determine that becomes supreme.”

The high -level religious organization, also known as the Iranian expert council, is made up of 88 high Islamic clerics which are responsible for electing the supreme leader of Iran, generally when the current one dies.

“From what we have seen so far, it does not look like what these people have been targeted” by Israel, said Dagres. “This is a replaceable regime in terms of leadership at the top, because they are prepared for the possible death of a supreme leader.”

Even if the entire theocratic system of the Government of Iran was to collapse, the upheavals would not necessarily guarantee a new government which is more user -friendly for The own people repressed from Iranin Israel or the United States.

“There could be a scenario where the body of the Islamic revolutionary guard takes over, and they could go to different directions,” said Dagres. “They could be more authoritarian. They can be more Western. We do not know. I think one of the Arab Spring Lessons until the Fall of AssadWas what’s going on is not always better.“”

These pro -democracy uprisings in the Arab Spring through the Middle East in 2010 – in Egypt, Libya, Syria, Yemen and Tunisia – initially encountered hope in the Democratic Western world, but in most of these countries, offers for democracy have either transformed into a civil war, or have been defeated by new or return regimes.

Could internal tension threaten the Iran regime?

Echoing Netanyahu, the Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz, warned the supreme leader of Iran on Tuesday, he could suffer a similar fate to former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein. The Iraqi strong man’s regime fell in 2003 after almost a quarter of a century. He was found hidden in a bunker by American forces and was then sentenced to death by a special Iraqi court and hanged for crimes against humanity.

“I stop the Iranian dictator against the continuation of committing war crimes and launching missiles towards Israeli civilians,” Katz said on Tuesday. “He must remember what happened to the dictator of the neighboring country in Iran who took the same path against Israel.”

Alon Pinkas, a former Israeli diplomat and commentator in Tel Aviv, told CBS News on Tuesday that “types of tensions that cause a diet is generally internal, not external”.

“A country of 10 million cannot rush a change of regime in a country of 90 million,” noted Pinkas, stressing the great divergence of size between Israel and much larger Iran, which, according to him, was also at 1,100 miles.

“For this to happen, for a change of diet to happen, you need a reconstruction of the failure of the invasion of Iraq [by the U.S.] From 2003, “said Pinkas.” And I don’t think anyone who doesn’t want that, certainly not the Americans. “”

He considers Netanyahu’s call to Iranians to rise up against their own leadership as “pure arrogance”.

“I doubt that whoever lives in Tehran and listens Netanyahu to say:” Oh, Wow, you know, it is a call for action, I should go out and fight the regime because Mr. Netanyahu, a thousand kilometers away, told me to do so. “”

The last time the demonstrations on the mass anti-government street broke out in Iran was in 2022 with the so-called Movement “Woman, Life, Freedom”. This outrage was triggered by the death of the 22-year-old Kurdish-Iranian woman, Mahsa Amini, under the care of the Iranian religious police, would have been detained for an inappropriate head cover.

Netanyahu repeated the three -words protest in the messages intended directly for Iranians since his country launched his attacks at the end of last week.

But these demonstrations in Iran were quickly canceled – and aggressively – by the Iranian authorities and had won in the spring of 2023.

Since Israel started bombing Iran last week, no one went down to the street of Iranian cities. The country’s residents seem to focus on the immediate threat, rush to shelter and evacuate large cities as the Israeli bombs fall.

“Why would you be in the streets if Israeli jets bomb these streets or bombed military targets not far from you,” noted Pinkas. “They move away, as far as possible from Tehran … But I think that when the dust settles down – and it could be in two, three days, it could also be in three weeks, I cannot honestly predict this – I think that a lot of this anger will be withdrawn from the diet.”

In other words, even if the actions of Israel do not provoke an immediate reversal of Iranian Islamic leaders, this could fuel the determination of the Iranians to resist their office leaders. If this happens, it could happen to one of the weakest moments in Ayatollah in almost half a century.