It is not true that the killing of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei necessarily means the immediate collapse of the regime.This is a hasty reading, reflecting more wishful thinking than sober analysis. Yes, we are witnessing a seismic blow, the most dangerous to hit the Islamic Republic since its establishment in 1979. But the more important political question is no: “is the blow bad?” but rather: “was the system built in a way that allows it to absorb a blow of this magnitude?”The available evidence so far indicates that the system was designed from the outset not to be merely the shadow of a single man, no matter how elevated his position.The Islamic Republic is not an autocratic regime like in the familiar Arab context, where the entire structure collapses when its head disappears. It is a complex ideological and securitised system, with a religious head, beneath whom there is a network of solid institutions—some constitutional, some security-related, some bureaucratic and economic—all working to preserve the entity itself, not merely to serve the individual.For this reason, the killing of the supreme leader does not automatically erase the state, nor topple the regime simply by virtue of the event; rather, it shifts the crisis from the ques …
