By Noah Rothman
Saturday, February 28, 2026
The war to fatally undermine the Iranian regime will
continue for “weeks, not days,” Senator Tom Cotton told CBS News. But, as of
hour 13 of offensive operations, it is not clear how much of the regime will be
around in weeks.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu believes that
decapitation strikes on senior Iranian officials at the outset of hostilities
took out Ayatollah Ali Khamenei himself. “There are growing signs that Khamenei
is no longer around,” the Israeli leader claimed. “This dictator” is “gone”:
Iran’s defense minister and the commander of the Islamic
Revolutionary Guard Corps were also eliminated in the first minutes of joint
U.S.–Israeli operations, according to Reuters.
In addition, U.S. and Israeli operations are believed to
have successfully killed several “top leaders” of the Iranian intelligence
apparatus, including the head of Iranian counterintelligence and
counterterrorism. The elimination of the “top echelon” of the security
apparatus, according to the Washington Post, is “inducing
panic” within the ranks of Iran’s security services. “Everything is falling
apart there,” said one unnamed Western security official, “we’re seeing it, and
feeling it.”
Meanwhile, the U.S. military reports no casualties as of this writing, and
only light damage to its facilities and no interruption to its operations as a
result of Iranian retaliation against a variety of targets across the Gulf
region.
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