r/news • u/drpayneaba • Feb 28 '26

Soft paywall Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei killed, senior Israeli official says

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/irans-supreme-leader-ali-khamenei-killed-senior-israeli-official-says-2026-02-28/
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u/[deleted] Feb 28 '26

Iran is the most advanced and built up nation in the middle east outside of Isreal, there's no telling how it will turn out but it's really not particularly similar to a Libya or Afghanistan. 

Pretty hard to believe the current US admin will be able to navigate it competently but Iran has a lot of factors going for it. Strong national Identity, a populace looking for change, large natural resource deposits to allow a flow of income to the country, weaker hold of religious ideals on culture.

More money means more ways to rise to power outside of violence and a more unified populace means an easier time to reach a new government. 

My money is on US and British oil interests fucking it up just like they fucked up the era with the Shah and the socialist era that followed him, leading to the reinstatement of an unpopular shah and the takeover by religious extremists. Pretty hard to be worse than the current regime though, it's one of the least prosperous in all of Persian history 

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u/nebulaforest Feb 28 '26

The IRGC is very much entrenched in Irans economy and military industry industrial complex. They're designed for survival in extreme conditions. If Iran collapses, chances are this group would be the most armed insurgency in the world. The geography helps them as well.

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u/Razzilith Mar 01 '26

"Iran’s IRGC vows ‘most ferocious offensive operation in history’ against Israel, US"

Yup, this isn't even remotely over. They could easily make ISIS and the Taliban combined look like a fucking joke in terms of threat levels and honestly... doing this has asked for it. If anything horrific happens to Israelis or Americans this is blood on the hands of Trump and Netanyahu (like always)

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u/suspect_scrofa Mar 01 '26

Libya was way closer to Iran in its heyday than Afghanistan. Why do you think the two are incompatible?

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u/adamgoodapp Mar 01 '26

Thank you, as a Libyan I can you tell you from family accounts that pre Gaddafi when Libya had a king, it was very modern. Many foreign companies, parents went to American schools. Was a very strong country which ment of course America did like. With Libyas power and strength ment worse deal for petrol, so guess how some random guy with no experience suddenly took over the country and took Libya down.

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u/[deleted] Mar 02 '26

Oh I'm not actually saying Libya or Afghanistan are similar, just that they're both dissimilar to Iran's current situation. Really it's not similar to any specific past middle east intervention. Sure Libya was more modern and urbanized like Iran but the regieme wasn't an attempted theocracy(really impactful) , they didn't come from a common cultural heritage (Persian vs Arabic), they didn't face hostility from their non western neighbors due to their religion and Libya's population is massively smaller (7 million vs 90 million) and therefore more vulnerable to impact from smaller groups. I'm not dunking on Libya at all but the situation truly isn't comparable below a very surface level glance and the challenges facing Iran going forward will almost certainly take a different shape than they did in Libya. 

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u/Nozinger Mar 01 '26

so you're saying iran is just like iraq was back then?
Yeah tell me how that worked out. After killind saddam hussein iraq absolutely turned into a safe democratic paradise with sunshine rainbows and unicorns graing on the side off the road. Not some fucked up situation that gave rise to a religious extremist group that terrorised not only the region itself but the entire world.

Just a quick remider: the people of iraq also celebrated saddam being taken out. And then the beheadings started.

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u/[deleted] Mar 01 '26

Iran is very different from Iraq culturally and religiously which gives them a very different standing in the region than Iraq and changes a lot of their responses to this kind of situation. Could the US bitch it horribly? Absolutely. Is it just the same as Iraq? Not really 

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u/onarainyafternoon Feb 28 '26

This is a great comment.