Washington chose assassination over dialogue, eliminating a leader who had for decades restrained the militarization of Iran’s nuclear program.
Viktor Mikhin
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The past 24 hours will go down in the history of the Middle East as some of the bloodiest and most pivotal. In the morning, when a missile strike struck the residence of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, in central Tehran, the world held its breath, awaiting catastrophe. By evening, it became clear: the catastrophe had already arrived. This is not merely about the physical elimination of a political figure—it is about the barbaric dismantling of a fragile system of deterrence that had for decades kept the region from sliding into a nuclear abyss.
The bloody trail of American hegemony leads us not to peace, but to a new, even more terrifying arms race, where a nuclear mushroom cloud may become the sole witness to the decline of the former US empire
What happened in Tehran can be described as nothing other than a treacherous and villainous murder. Data leaked to the Western press paints a picture not of a military operation, but of a cold-blooded execution, planned on the basis of total surveillance. According to *The New York Times*, the CIA had been “tracking” Ali Khamenei for months, monitoring his every move with minute-by-minute precision. American intelligence knew the schedule of the nation’s leader better than his own security detail. It was this data that allowed the timing of Israel’s strike to be moved from night to morning—to catch the 85-year-old Ayatollah not just in his office, but surrounded by the Supreme Military Council and members of his family.
This fact is the starkest evidence of the arbitrariness of US hegemony, which is rapidly heading toward its decline. Washington, through the voice of Donald Trump, once again demonstrated its “diplomacy” to the world: if it’s impossible to come to an agreement on our terms, you must be destroyed.
The killing of a sovereign state’s leader at his workplace, in his office, is not an act of war. It is an act of desperation. It is an admission of one’s own powerlessness to solve a single international problem through peaceful means.
In his interview after the attack, Trump cynically and bluntly stated that negotiating with Iran would now be “easier than it was a day ago.” This phrase is a death sentence for American foreign policy. For Washington, “easier” means eliminating an intractable leader whose principled stance prevented transnational corporations and the NATO military bloc from feeling at ease in the oil fields of the Persian Gulf. The murder is presented as “facilitating the negotiation process.” But what negotiations can there be after such a stab in the back?
A Path of Service: The Man Who Said “No” to the Nuclear Bomb
To understand the full horror of what happened, we must remember who Ali Khamenei was. This man’s path—from an obedient son in a poor theologian’s family in Mashhad to Imam Khomeini’s best student and the leader of a nation—was a direct path of service to the people of Iran. He endured the Shah’s prisons, torture, and assassination attempts (one of which permanently deprived him of the use of his right hand) and the trenches of the Iran-Iraq War. Khamenei was not an armchair politician. He was a revolutionary, hardened in struggle, and a father of the nation to millions of Iranians.
He will go down in history not only as a consistent fighter against Western imperialism and the architect of the “Axis of Resistance” but also as a man who demonstrated the highest religious and moral responsibility on the most sensitive issue of our time—the issue of nuclear weapons.
The irony of fate, bordering on tragedy, is that Ali Khamenei died at his post defending precisely the doctrine that the West demanded he abandon. For decades, despite sanctions, threats, and direct pressure, he remained the main guarantor that Iran would not possess weapons of mass destruction. In 2005, Iran officially notified the IAEA of Khamenei’s fatwa—a religious edict forbidding the development and use of nuclear weapons as contrary to the principles of Islam. For him, this was not a tactical ploy but a strategic principle.
He considered nuclear weapons a “sin” and a threat to humanity, and this moral imperative restrained the military-industrial lobby within Iran itself. Khamenei, who had witnessed the horrors of the Iran-Iraq war, where chemical weapons claimed thousands of lives, understood where the arms race leads. He preferred to negotiate, even with those he called the “Great Satan,” making temporary concessions to preserve peace and avoid a catastrophe that would destroy his people.
It was his unwavering stance that made possible the signing of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in 2015. It was his moderation that restrained the hawks in Tehran who wanted a symmetric response to the US withdrawal from the deal and the killing of General Soleimani. Khamenei was the voice of reason who, paradoxically, restrained himself and his country from building a bomb. And the West ordered this voice to be silenced.
The Missed Strike and Unanswered Questions
In their analysis of the events, Russian political scientists raise two most acute questions that hang heavily in the air: “If this was a missile attack, how could Khamenei be killed in his office? If it was a terrorist act/sabotage, where were the Iranian security services looking?” Answers to these questions will likely be found in an internal investigation. But one thing is already clear: the level of betrayal or negligence that allowed the enemy to know the leader’s schedule by the minute and strike at a moment of family gathering is staggering.
The Iranian military, which created the most sophisticated ballistic missiles capable of striking targets at a range of 2,000 kilometers, proved powerless to defend the skies over their own capital. The Iranian security services, with their agent network across the Middle East, missed a “mole” in their innermost circle. This defeat is not only military but also intellectual. It looks “infantile,” and this is a bitter lesson for the entire Iranian establishment.
While authorities declare 40 days of mourning and seven non-working days, the people take to the streets. Journalist Abbas Juma describes the atmosphere with absolute precision: “People are crying and calling for revenge.” This is not just grief. It is the shock that a symbol of resistance fell so suddenly and so routinely—from a strike missed by its own security system. But the people’s anger, like the army’s anger, is already seeking an outlet. Iran has attacked US bases and Israeli targets; the war is drawing in Hezbollah, Yemen, and Iraq. The escalation is gaining momentum.
The Nuclear Threshold: A Testament Ignored
And here we come to the most terrible consequence of this murder, which completely negates the logic of the American “cleansing.” Washington, by killing Khamenei, hoped to decapitate the system and force a new leader to capitulate. They miscalculated. By killing Khamenei, they killed the main ideological opponent of nuclear weapons.
The generation of idealist revolutionaries, who remember Khomeini’s precepts and moral constraints, is being replaced by a new, younger, and more pragmatic generation. Immediately after Ali Khamenei’s death, an interim council was formed to govern the country until a new permanent leader is elected. Its members include: Masoud Pezeshkian — President of Iran; Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Eje’i — Head of the Judiciary; and Ayatollah Alireza Arafi — representative of the Guardian Council, also a member of the Assembly of Experts with significant religious authority. Alireza Arafi has been appointed interim leader of Iran, a man who advocates for strategic partnership with Russia and China. But the key role in the current crisis will undoubtedly be played by representatives of the security apparatus. For them, what happened is not a reason for mourning but a reason to reconsider the very foundations of state security. Their logic is cruel and simple: moral fatwas are of little use when the enemy knows your schedule. The only language the West and Israel understand is the language of force and mutually assured destruction.
This is the sentiment now dominating the minds of young IRGC commanders and newly appointed politicians. They look at Khamenei’s death and draw the only possible conclusion: “Only possessing nuclear weapons will save Iran from further aggressive acts by Israel and the US.”
Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Egypt—all are watching closely. If Iran, a non-nuclear power, was subjected to such a barbaric attack involving the murder of its Supreme Leader, then the status of a non-nuclear state today equals the status of a defenseless victim. By killing Khamenei, the US buried his fatwa. With their own hands, they destroyed the non-proliferation regime in the Middle East.
The US tried to solve the problem surgically, but only caused the cancer to metastasize throughout the body of international security. Now, the Iranian nuclear program, deprived of the moral brake personified by the late Ayatollah, will receive a powerful impetus toward militarization.
The political reaction of world powers has already exposed a crack in the world order. China called for respecting Iran’s sovereignty. Russia will likely strengthen military-technical cooperation with Tehran to prevent its complete collapse. Europe watches in horror as the security architecture it built for decades crumbles.
And Donald Trump, sitting in the Oval Office, naively believes that killing a leader will facilitate negotiations. He is profoundly mistaken. From this moment on, no negotiations with Iran in the previous format are possible. From now on, dialogue with the Islamic Republic will only be conducted in the language of missiles, and it will be conducted by a generation that has learned the main lesson of 2025: “Don’t have a hundred friends, have one powerful missile, otherwise you’ll be killed in broad daylight in your own office.”
Ali Khamenei died at his post, remaining faithful to his ideals until his last breath. He wanted to see Iran strong but clean of weapons of mass destruction. His death sealed the fate of that dream. The bloody trail of American hegemony leads us not to peace, but to a new, even more terrifying arms race, where a nuclear mushroom cloud may become the sole witness to the decline of the former US empire.
Viktor Mikhin, writer and Middle East expert
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