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BREAKING: Trump Says Khamenei Is Dead. What Happens Now in Iran? 

Dozens of people during rally Iranian embassy in Madrid, Spain in support of the joint U.S.-Israel operation in Iran, Feb. 28. (Carlos Lujan/Europa Press via Getty Images)

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President Donald Trump said that Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is dead, following reports of his killing in a joint military operation conducted by the United States and Israel.

“Khamenei, one of the most evil people in History, is dead,” Trump wrote on Truth Social Saturday afternoon. 

“This is not only Justice for the people of Iran, but for all Great Americans, and those people from many Countries throughout the World, that have been killed or mutilated by Khamenei and his gang of bloodthirsty THUGS,” Trump said.

A senior Israeli official told Reuters earlier in the day that Khamenei’s body was found, and Iranian media reported that his son-in-law and daughter-in-law were also killed in the joint operation against Iran that began early Saturday morning.

In a post-Khamenei Iran, the future of the country would be in the hands of its citizens, according to Victoria Coates, the former deputy national security advisor to President Donald Trump, who spoke with The Daily Signal on Saturday before reports of Khamenei’s death.

It is “not America’s mission to go and create democracy in Iran. That’s for the people of Iran if they wish to do it, or whatever other form of government they might want,” Coates told The Daily Signal. She currently serves as vice president of the Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy at The Heritage Foundation.

In a video message announcing the operation early Saturday morning, Trump told the Iranian people that their freedom was “at hand.”

“When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be, probably, your only chance for generations,” Trump said.

Operation Epic Fury, the joint operation, targeted key regime assets, military installations, and Khamenei’s compound.

Neither Coates nor Ilan Berman, senior vice president of the American Foreign Policy Council, believe the U.S. operation will last for an extended period of time. Both spoke with The Daily Signal before reports of Khamenei’s death.

“What we’ve seen so far is something much closer to Venezuela than to Iraq and Afghanistan in the past, right in terms of administration signaling,” Berman said, referring to the U.S. capture of Venezuelan totalitarian leader Nicolás Maduro in January.

“The optimal scenario for the president is for the supreme leader [of Iran] to go and for a new crop of leaders that are more amenable to compromise with the United States to come about,” Berman said. “But that doesn’t necessarily mean that, you know, [Trump] wants to take out the entire regime, and he wants to pull it out, root and branch.”

In Venezuela, members of Maduro’s regime remain in power, but have proven to be amenable to cooperating with the U.S. now that Maduro is sitting in prison in New York.

Trump said in a video announcing the U.S. strikes in Iran that the operation is being conducted “for the future.”

“We pray for every service member as they selflessly risk their lives to ensure that Americans and our children will never be threatened by a nuclear-armed Iran,” Trump said.

The U.S. sought a diplomatic solution with Iran during three rounds of recent negotiations, but Iran refused to agree to stop enriching stockpiles of uranium. Oman’s Foreign Minister Badr Albusaidi, one of the diplomats involved in recent talks between the U.S. and Iran, told CBS News that the Iranians were willing to minimize enrichment, forgo stockpiling nuclear material, and allow IAEA inspections.

“We are going to destroy their missiles and raze their missile industry to the ground,” Trump said in his video message Saturday, adding, “We’re going to annihilate their navy.”

Coates says she believes there are “off ramps” built into Trump’s planned operation in Iran, “so if we get farther faster than we anticipated, the president can cut things off.”  

Khamenei’s death could be one of the “off ramps” for U.S. deescalation in the region.  

The U.S. is targeting Iran’s ships and naval capacities “because the president understands that the first natural Iranian reaction would be to do maneuvers to close or narrow the Strait of Hormuz,” Berman said.

The Strait of Hormuz connects the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman and is a key oil shipping lane. Global oil markets would be affected if Iran successfully closed the Strait of Hormuz, Berman explained, adding global pressure on the U.S. to halt its operation against Iran.

Most of the U.S. strikes so far have focused on Iranian military targets, according to the Institute for the Study of War, a national security research organization based in D.C.

The Israel Defense Forces say they have carried out strikes against Iran’s missile launchers and aerial defense systems.

The Iranian regime responded by launching missiles at Israeli and U.S. military assets in the Middle East.

Bahrain’s Foreign Ministry said Saturday it “is dealing with damage in three buildings” in the capital city of Manama and nearby Muharraq caused by “drone attacks and falling debris from an intercepted missile.”

Iran has also targeted countries that host U.S. military bases, including the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Kuwait.

A concern, according to Coates, is that Iran will activate terrorist sleeper cells in the U.S.

“We don’t know what crossed over our southern border or any of our other borders during the Biden administration, and we but we do know there were a number of folks on the terrorist watch list who got in,” Coates said.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said Saturday that she is in “direct coordination with our federal intelligence and law enforcement partners as we continue to closely monitor and thwart any potential threats to the homeland.”

Middle East ‘Anti-Iran’ Sentiment

The United Arab Emirates “condemned and denounced” the Iranian missile attacks in a statement Saturday, calling the targeting of “the UAE and several brotherly nations in the region” a “flagrant violation of national sovereignty and a clear breach of international law and the Charter of the United Nations.”

There is now an “anti-Iran regime” coalition forming in the Middle East, according to Berman.

“The Iranians have done themselves no favors, because they’ve hardened Arab attitudes about the need for regime change in Iran,” he said.

It is possible, according to Jacob Olidort, chief research officer and director of American security at the America First Policy Institute, that nations such as Jordan, the UAE, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia will also take action against Iran, especially if their civilians are killed as Iran targets U.S. military infrastructure in the region.

The operation’s “consequences,” Olidort says, “will be global in scale, and they will dramatically transform the global landscape.”

Olidort explains the operation against Iran provides “a great deal more opportunities for the United States and its partners to expand opportunities for peace and prosperity.”

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