Iran’s Regime Has Changed—for the Worse

Wall Street Journal: “The U.S. and Israel launched the war with the hope that killing top Iranian officials—starting with Mojtaba’s father, Ali Khamenei—would create the conditions for regime change or at least the emergence of leaders more willing to bend to America and Israel’s interests. In an address to the nation one month into the war, President Trump called the new leadership “more reasonable.””

“Instead, the void is being filled by radical new leaders who have shown little interest in political compromise at home or abroad. Iranians demonstrating against Israel walk in front of a billboard showing Iranian Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei.”

“Iran’s hard-liners—anti-Western ideologues with no tolerance for domestic dissent—have always had a place in the country’s overlapping and competing circles of power, their influence rising under the patronage of the elder Khamenei. But they now dominate Iran’s political and military leadership, energized by a war that many of them believe presages the return of a Shiite Muslim messiah.”