Adios, Ayatollah

UPDATED

By Abdul Masih —

Israel and the U.S. targeted Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, along with other top regime leaders, not by night but by day, at 9 a.m. local time, so that Iranians could see who and what is being targeted in air strikes Saturday.

Coordinated Tomahawk missiles and bombing runs will be “massive and ongoing,” President Trump said, and will destroy Iran’s leadership, military capabilities, nuclear and ballistic missile program. When the snake is fully decapitated, a leadership vacuum will remain for the Iranian people to seize.

“It will be yours to take,” Trump said in a video addressing the Iranian people. “This will be probably your only chance for generations.”

It was not known if the strikes succeeded in killing Khamenei, who started his leadership as a moderate but grew increasingly extreme as he resorted to violent suppression of his own people to keep power.

Iran launched a barrage of missile strikes against Israel, U.S.-aligned Arab states, U.S. military bases and the U.S. Navy. Some hits have been reported, including the Dubai luxury hotel Fairmont and the U.S. 5th Naval Base in Bahrain. But casualties remain unknown.

While U.S. university students, obeying their extreme left professors, general oppose anything and everything Trump does, university students in Iran, who have protagonized a resurgence of protests, celebrated in the streets attacks against their hated regime.

Meanwhile, Israelis hunkered down in bomb shelters. Images showed them too celebrating, inside the bomb shelters, as hope bubbles up to rid the world of the Middle East’s biggest bully. Since the Revolution of 1979, Iran has adhered to its theological belief that it must wipe out Israel to fulfill Shia Islam’s apocalyptic scriptures.

The operation has been code-named Operation Epic Fury. Waiting in the wings is the son of the Shah deposed by the Islamists of 1979. Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi has offered himself as a figurehead and spokesman to oversee a transition to a secular, democratic nation.

What remains to be seen is if the power vacuum can be filled peacefully in a region where religious extremism tends to win out.

In the days building up to Saturday’s attacks, President Trump likened an Iranian regime change to the tearing down of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War. When the Soviet Union disintegrated, the math of Mutually Assured Destruction via nuclear war largely vanished.

Similarly, Iran has been the most rogue sponsor of terror, arming and funding fanatical militants in Gaza, in Yemen, in Syria, in Lebanon and in Iraq. Iran has been a royal pain in the butt, and the region will be relieved to be rid of the bad actor.

Muslim states largely condemned Iran upon the opening of aggressions, including Qatar, which confusingly rides the fence of being a Western-thinking modernized wonder and a terror sponsor.

While pretty much everyone everywhere looked forward to Iran becoming a partner of peace and prosperity in the Middle East, unsurprisingly Somali-born Rep. Ilhan Omar condemned the actions as an “illegal regime change war.” I guess she loves terrorist governments.

The attacks started on the lapse of Trump’s deadline for negotiations with Iran. The U.S. has negotiated for the end of Iran’s nuclear weapon’s and ballistic missile program — points on which Iran was unwilling to compromise.

The Israeli Defense Forces claim to have destroyed all remaining Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps missile launchers, so even if the Iranian regime has missiles, they can’t do anything with them.

Sources: Tousi T.V., Fox News, AP, BBC, CNN, others.