TEL AVIV

AS IRAN’S SUPREME Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, is killed in a targeted strike, that only leaves Iran’s population of perhaps 93 million, its tens of thousands of mullahs, its almost one million man military, and, of course, the 200,000 Revolutionary Guards that are the backbone of the regime, remaining for the Israelis and Americans to take care of, according to military experts.

“US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are hoping the supreme leader’s demise, followed closely by a lot of his senior lieutenants, will be the spark that lights the flame of revolt against the authorities in the Islamic Republic,” says General Larry Drone of the Firing Line Institute, an independent think tank. “Layer by layer, the plan appears to be to inflict hurt on Iran to such an extent that the regime is utterly crippled and the people so furious with their leadership that they will rise up and replace the Islamic Republic with a secular democracy. That’s the plan anyway. Plans, however, rarely survive contact with the enemy. Remember the last obliteration of Iran’s nuclear program.”