Iran's Ayatollah Khamenei is dead, but the regime he built still stands: this is the moment to dismantle it

This is not merely the death of a “hard-line cleric,” as some headlines would have it. It is the removal of the Islamic Republic’s central decision-maker: the man who fused theology to coercion, directed the IRGC’s rise into a state within a state, and built a regional proxy network designed to spill others’ blood while insulating Tehran from accountability.

His death, however overdue, does not by itself deliver liberation. It is an opening, and openings can close. In the hours after such a strike, the temptation in the West is either triumphalism (“problem solved”) or moral paralysis (“too risky to act”).

Both are mistakes. If Khamenei’s elimination is to mean anything beyond a fleeting shock, it must become the beginning of sustained pressure against the machinery he built, and sustained support for the people he ruled.

The Islamic Republic’s brutality did not begin with Khamenei, but under him, it became systemic and routine. In 1988, Khomeini ordered the mass killings across the country. Approximately 30,000 are estimated to have been brutally executed.

Since then, the IRGC has continued to extrajudicially execute thousands of its own. In the most recent protests against the regime, IRGC security forces killed an estimated 20,000-30,000 Iranians using live-fire massacres and torture.

The violence did not stop at Iran’s borders. Khamenei presided over a deliberate strategy of proxy warfare, arming and enabling militants to bleed adversaries while allowing the Islamic Republic to deny responsibility.

That strategy has left a long trail of dead across the region and beyond, from militias and rockets to drones and maritime sabotage. It is why this moment is not just symbolic: it strikes at the head of the system that orchestrated it.

His death, confirmed by Iranian state media following a joint U.S.-Israeli strike, marks the end of an era of unbridled oppression and global menace.

But it also underscores the profound debt humanity owes to the Israeli and American forces that dismantled this evil and destabilizing regime.

While uncertainty still looms one thing is certain: when Americans and Israelis work together, there is no enemy too strong nor obstacle too great.

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Emma Schubart is a Research Fellow at The Henry Jackson Society

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