How an assassination by Trump and Netanyahu became a victory for their enemy

July 12, 2026 — 3:30pm

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It is quite possible that when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pitched his poorly thought-out plan for an air power-delivered regime change in Iran to President Donald Trump, he promised that Iranians would pour into the streets in their hundreds of thousands once the US and Iran had eliminated Iran’s Supreme Leader.

And so it came to pass, only not in the way that the Israeli prime minister envisaged. In recent days there have been multiple outbreaks of conflict between the US and Iran, despite the ceasefire deal that was negotiated amid much fanfare last month. The past week has also seen literally millions of people in the streets of Tehran, Qom, and Mashhad in Iran and in the holy cities of Najaf and Karbala in Iraq. The multi-city funeral procession was a highly orchestrated, and heavily attended demonstration by the Iranian establishment of the durability of its uniquely Iranian theocratic system of government and the support, if not the actual reverence, that the Supreme Leader still commanded, even in death.

The large-scale assassination of the Supreme Leader and a number of other senior leaders imposed a generational change on the Iranian system earlier than it had anticipated. Not only that, the change took place under intense military pressure from an ongoing air campaign from two of the most powerful air forces in the world. The system, and its ability to handle the succession process, has now been proven to........

© The Age