For almost four decades, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has been the untouchable pillar at the center of the Islamic Republic. He is a man who survived bullets, conspiracies, and regional upheavals to dominate Iranian politics for over 35 years.
But now, as rumors swirl of his declining mental state and as world leaders openly discuss his potential removal, Khamenei has arguably become both Iran’s greatest asset and its gravest vulnerability.
Now, his end could possibly be near.
On Monday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made his most explicit reference yet to the notion of directly targeting the Iranian leader.
“We are doing what we need to do,” Netanyahu said when asked if he plans on targeting Khamenei by US news outlet ABC.
On Tuesday morning, Defense Minister Israel Katz also added to threats, warning Khamenei that he could end up like the deposed, former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, who was tried and hung by the Iraqi people after his regime was toppled by US and allied forces in 2003.
Katz’s comments are yet another sign of Israel considering assassinating Khamenei.
The idea of targeting Khamenei is not new. In fact, his survival is already an anomaly. On June 27, 1981, during the chaotic years that followed the Iranian Revolution and the implementation of the Islamic Republic, Khamenei narrowly escaped death when a bomb concealed in a tape recorder exploded as he delivered a speech at Tehran’s Abuzar Mosque.
The attack, attributed to the opposition group Mujahedin-e-Khalq (Forqan Group), nearly severed his right arm and left him permanently injured. Yet Khamenei survived, and his ascendancy to the top of the Shia world continued – first to the presidency and, eventually, to the supreme leadership after Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s death in 1989.
Since then, Khamenei has led the Islamic Republic through wars, sanctions, proxy conflicts, assassinations, and international isolation. He has navigated Iran to the depths of a global pariah, shunned by most and feared by many.
But the octogenarian cleric now finds himself in perhaps the most precarious position of his rule. Even the protests of ordinary Iranians have never brought him as close to the precipice as Israel has in the past few days.
THE PRESSURE has mounted sharply in recent months. According to reports published by Iran International on Monday – and they could only be rumors – Khamenei’s health, both physical and mental, has severely deteriorated following Israel’s unprecedented wave of targeted assassinations against Iran’s military and intelligence elite.
Several of Khamenei’s most trusted senior Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commanders have been assassinated by Israel. This adds to a year in which Khamenei’s proxy leaders Yahya Sinwar, Ismail Haniyeh, and Hassan Nasrallah have all been killed by the Jewish state. His ally in Syria, Bashar al-Assad, fled the country last December as his regime fell after 13 years of civil war.
The cumulative psychological strain, the reports suggested, may have triggered a nervous breakdown, with some of Iran’s top commanders allegedly sidelining the supreme leader from critical military decisions.
Israel’s repeated targeting of senior IRGC officials, which Jerusalem views as legitimate military responses to Iranian aggression, has not only dealt severe operational blows to Iran’s regional influence but may have also rattled the regime’s internal stability.
Officially, Tehran has dismissed the reports of Khamenei’s deteriorating health as propaganda. State television continues to broadcast carefully choreographed footage of the supreme leader meeting officials and clerics, reading prepared speeches, and presiding over religious ceremonies. But among the Iranian opposition, exiles, and even some regional intelligence services, a different narrative is gaining ground: Iran may already be functioning without its supreme leader fully in control.
A make-or-break moment for Israel
For Israel, it is a make-or-break moment, perhaps. While targeting Khamenei might deal a physical, psychological and symbolic blow that could genuinely bring the final death throes of the Islamic Republic, it also risks triggering global condemnation and retaliation from the IRGC and its network of proxies - if they still have the capabilities.
The Iranian people have yet to take the streets in mass numbers - whether through fear of reprisals or simply that they are trying to take care of themselves while their nation is under threat. But Israel is weighing up whether to help them by removing Khamenei once and for all.
The fact this is even a topic for debate now shows how fragile the Islamic Republic’s regime has become.