After Khamenei, who stands in Israel's crosshairs?

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu leaked news of the assassination of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei through the media and through his ambassador in Washington, Yechiel Leiter. He then left the “honor” of the official announcement to US President Donald Trump, feeding the latter’s appetite for claiming credit and basking in the glow of victory.

For Netanyahu, however, a set of important interim goals had already been achieved—objectives he had dreamed of since the 1990s. By drawing the US military machine into the largest confrontation with Iran since the Islamic Republic was established in 1979, he secured both the political cover and the full military backing needed either to topple the rule of the “Ayatollahs” or at least push it to the edge of collapse. 

While Israeli and American intelligence agencies worked to document Iranian losses at the highest levels of leadership, Netanyahu’s office released a carefully staged photograph. It shows him speaking with Trump on the phone. Spread before him is a large map and a recently published book on World War II by the young British historian Tim Bouverie, titled “Allies at War.” The book explores the complex relationships between the three great wartime leaders of the United States, Britain and the Soviet Union—Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin—and traces the arc of their cooperation and rivalry through the defeat of Nazi Germany and the reshaping of the global order after 1945.

Opening new fronts as sole strategy

It is unlikely that Netanyahu was reading the book amid the intensity of the operation’s first day—dubbed the joint campaign “Lion’s Roar and Epic Fury.” But the title placed deliberately in front of him seemed meant to describe his relationship with Trump: a partnership of equals, not a subordinate alliance with Washington. In that framing, Netanyahu presents himself as a central partner in every major decision, including the remaking of the Middle East.

Perhaps “Bibi” also wanted to remind the world that Tehran once marked a turning point in America’s role in global politics. In the fall of 1943, the Iranian capital hosted the first meeting of the “Big Three.” The summit ended with Britain’s influence visibly diminished after Churchill failed to impose his vision against opening a new front against Germany, while Washington emerged as the decisive center of leadership—alongside Moscow as one of the two poles of the postwar international order.

That historical moment may well inspire Netanyahu’s conviction that opening new fronts is essential to reshaping the region. Since the summer of 2024, he has pursued an unrelenting campaign to redraw the Middle East on the ruins of the old rules of engagement once observed by all parties—including the United States and Iran.

The shift began when Israel opened a direct front deep behind enemy lines with the assassination of Hamas political bureau chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran. That was followed by the killing of senior Hezbollah figure Fouad Shokr, the pager attacks and the elimination of commanders from Hezbollah’s Radwan unit, and eventually the assassination of the party’s secretary-general and Israel’s most prominent regional adversary, Hassan Nasrallah.

All of this came to a head in the June 2025 war—an escalation that now appears, in hindsight, to have been preparation for something far more dangerous.

Targeting Khamenei directly on the first day of the current war on Iran effectively shatters the last remaining rule of engagement. In classical warfare, eliminating the head of a regime is typically the final act—the culmination of victory, not the opening move.

That reversal raises deeper questions about the war’s ultimate goals, especially in a battlefield whose strategic and geographic realities leave Iran with only painful choices. Tehran can escalate sporadically by targeting Western shipping and US aircraft carriers—igniting the entire region—or continue launching limited, incremental attacks on Israeli territory and US bases in some Gulf capitals.

So far, those responses have failed to pressure Washington into halting the strikes, nor have they demonstrated a capacity for equivalent retaliation.

With Khamenei gone—and with the yet unknown fate of likely a significant number of senior leaders of the Islamic Republic—the continued success of the US–Israeli alliance in striking ballistic missile bases and sabotaging weapons depots could erode Iran’s ability to withstand sustained bombardment.

The result may be growing internal fragmentation, both politically and socially, especially given the recent student and popular protests that revealed sharp divisions across Iranian society.

Yet the path forward remains uncertain. Several scenarios loom: the collapse of the regime altogether, as happened in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and Bashar Al‑Assad’s Syria; a radical shift in Tehran’s policies under pressure from Washington and Tel Aviv, reminiscent of interventions across Central America or the ongoing strategy toward Venezuela; or a leadership change imposed from outside.

From chaos to permissibility

Whatever path emerges, each scenario ultimately leads—at least for a time—to a kind of chaos that Netanyahu appears to welcome. In his vision, such disorder forms the foundation of what he sees as a “peace of deterrence,” built on overwhelming force and strategic swagger, with Israel standing as the region’s undisputed axis of power.

This outlook echoes an updated version of the ideas of the Zionist thinker Ze’ev Jabotinsky and his doctrine of the “iron wall,” later reinforced by the Begin Doctrine, which has guided Israeli strategic thinking since the 1981 destruction of Iraq’s nuclear reactor. The principle is simple: deter enemies wherever they may be, using every means available.

Netanyahu’s first objective after Khamenei’s assassination, therefore, is to establish a state of absolute permissibility—a condition in which Israel can strike freely without provoking a proportional response, while simultaneously eliminating any future possibility of recovery.

In practical terms, that means forcing Iran to its knees and permanently disabling its ability to pose a future threat to Zionism—whether through direct confrontation or through funding, arming or supporting resistance movements.

While the current offensive enjoys regional endorsement, Western backing and near-total international silence, Netanyahu now appears closer than ever to achieving a goal he described more than three decades ago.

In his 1993 book “A Place Among the Nations,” written during the Oslo negotiations, he argued that confronting the “grave Iranian threat” should not be limited to containment or temporary restraint. Instead, he wrote, the response must be broader—comparable to the systemic changes that followed the collapse of communism after shifts in the USSR’s governing order.

Old lines revive old fears

Yet Netanyahu’s list of objectives extends far beyond what he has already achieved.

Before the war, he spoke openly about building a new regional axis. Today, the shifting balance of power—shaped by Tehran’s exposure, the devastation of Gaza and the weakening of several regional centers of gravity—appears to move that vision closer to reality.

Gulf states now face repeated threats, not only from Iran but also from Israel’s willingness to breach what was once considered the protective umbrella of US deterrence, as demonstrated by the attack on Doha last summer. At the same time, catastrophic instability continues to unfold in Sudan and Libya, while Israel expands its strategic reach into East Africa through Somaliland.

The leader of Zionism, it seems, will not be satisfied with his current successes. As long as the Arab world fails to produce a response capable of seizing the initiative, his appetite for further expansion will only grow.

Why wouldn’t it?

In the same book, Netanyahu argues that Israel has already made significant concessions for the sake of coexistence and peace—concessions that, in his telling, the Arabs never reciprocated. The language reflects the vast scope of territorial ambitions that many overlook under the weight of persistent propaganda.

Among the supposed concessions Netanyahu lists are several claims he frames as Zionist rights: abandoning the annexation of the Litani River, which he describes as the primary water source for Israeli settlements; relinquishing 80% of what he calls the "Jewish national homeland" through the creation of the Emirate of Transjordan, which later became the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan; and surrendering the Sinai Peninsula—evacuating thousands of settlers and demolishing settlement units, schools and farms built over fifteen years.

He also describes Israel as having renounced strategic and economic claims to the land where, according to Jewish tradition, the Torah was given, and handing Taba back to Egypt. Finally, he cites Israel’s acceptance of Palestinian Authority in Gaza and the West Bank.

As for the Golan Heights, he treats its permanent occupation as a given. And he portrays the displacement of Palestinians into the vast deserts of the Arab world as a solution that would be "fair for everyone."

Clearing the enemy’s strategic space

Netanyahu has written all of this explicitly, in unmistakable terms. He neither denies it nor appears troubled by its implications—even though today his rhetoric often surpasses that of the most extreme voices on Israel’s far right.

Three decades before he appeared on television last August holding a talisman bearing a map of "Greater Israel" stretching from the Nile to the Euphrates, Netanyahu had already outlined the same generational vision: a long march sustained by believers in that dream.

At the time his book was published, the US ambassador to Israel—Mike Huckabee—might not yet have dared to declare that the Jewish people were entitled to that vast geographic space across the borders of seven Arab states. Today such statements are voiced openly.

Allowing the Zionist state to clear its strategic space—its Lebensraum—under the banners of prudence, repositioning or the search for a shared peaceful future will inevitably lead to deeper military and strategic control, as well as economic dominance, over Arab societies.

That domination could come through direct territorial expansion by force, or through sustained investment in weakening the capabilities of surrounding states and neutralizing their ability to resist.

There may be no more favorable moment to revive Israel’s “target bank” than the present one.

European and international powers are voluntarily retreating from the spotlight, wary of confronting what some describe as Trump-era authoritarianism. At the same time, several Arab governments have joined what resembles a council of peace shaped by destruction and aggression, hesitating to declare their true—or perhaps their moral—positions until national interests themselves become a matter of interpretation.

Today and yesterday have both abandoned us, leaving us weakened by paralysis and retreat. And tomorrow will not reconcile with us unless we recognize the singular brutality of this present moment of Zionist expansion—and the systematic destruction of peoples and civilizations that may follow.