www.flyingpenguin.com
I don't think getting a moderate as Supreme Leader was ever in the cards. Khamenei's son was always in contention to become Supreme Leader and take over for his father especially since one of his main rivals the late President of Iran died in a helicopter accident in 2024.I think Trump's been admitting what went wrong this whole time, and it's not that there was no plan. There was a concept of a plan. We were supposed to annihilate the regime in a quick kaboom and install our chosen successors as soon as the smoke cleared. Presumably these successors were supposed to call off Iran's counterattack before it really got going.
But as Trump keeps mentioning, we killed the planned successors. We don't have anybody left on the inside that we're talking to because we killed them all. Oops.
Israel says Iran's top security official, Ali Larijani, and the head of the paramilitary Basij force, Gholamreza Soleimani, have been killed in Israeli air strikes.
"Larijani and the Basij commander were eliminated last night and have joined Khamenei, the head of the annihilation programme, along with all those eliminated from the Axis of Evil in the depths of hell," Defence Minister Israel Katz said.
Iranian authorities have confirmed the deaths of both men, as well as Larijani's son and bodyguards.
A former leader of the hardline "principlist" faction - committed to the ideological principles of the Islamic revolution, Larijani was described a "moderate conservative" in later years.
He was appointed secretary of the SNSC last August and is thought to have overseen the unprecedented crackdown by the Basij and other security forces on protests that swept across Iran in December and January. At least 6,508 protesters were killed and 53,000 arrested, human rights activists say.
Esmaeil Khatib, the Iranian intelligence minister, became the country’s latest high-ranking official to be targeted in the U.S.-Israeli military campaign.
Israel’s military said on Wednesday that it had killed Mr. Khatib in an overnight airstrike. The Iranian president, Masoud Pezeshkian, confirmed the killing in a social media post later in the day, calling it “a cowardly assassination.”