CIA Warned Khamenei’s Fall Could Lead to IRGC Rule

The bombs were already falling on Tehran when the intelligence picture came into full view. The CIA, in assessments produced over the final two weeks of February, had reached a sobering conclusion: even if Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei were killed in a U.S.-Israeli strike on Iran, the regime would almost certainly not collapse. It would more likely harden — reorganized under hardline commanders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. That assessment did not stop Operation Epic Fury. It didn’t even slow it down.

On the morning of Saturday, February 28, 2026, the United States and Israel launched what may be the most consequential military operation in the Middle East since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The Pentagon called it “Operation Epic Fury.” Israel named its component “Operation Roaring Lion.”

Explosions tore through Tehran, Isfahan, Qom, Karaj, and Kermanshah as American and Israeli forces targeted Iran’s missile infrastructure, military command sites, intelligence facilities, and the political nerve center of the Islamic Republic — including areas near Khamenei’s own offices and residence.

President Trump addressed the nation at 2:30 in the morning Eastern time via a video posted to Truth Social. He was direct. “The United States military began major combat operations in Iran,” he said. “Our objective is to defend the American people by eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime, a vicious group of very hard, terrible people.” He described the regime as having spent 47 years chanting “death to America” and waging what he called “an unending campaign of bloodshed and mass murder.” He encouraged the Iranian people to rise up once the strikes created an opening. “When we’re finished,” Trump said, “take over your government.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu framed the operation in similarly existential terms. “This murderous terrorist regime must not be armed with nuclear weapons that would allow it to threaten all humanity,” Netanyahu said. “Our joint action will create the conditions for the brave Iranian people to take their fate into their own hands.”

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz called it a “preemptive attack” designed to “remove threats to the State of Israel.” According to the Times of Israel, seven missiles struck the district of Tehran where Khamenei normally resides, along with the presidential palace and the National Security Council.

The operation emerged as the culmination of a long, escalating arc stretching back through months of failed diplomacy, a massive U.S. military buildup in the Gulf, and a wave of domestic unrest inside Iran that shook the clerical regime to its foundations. Beginning in late December 2025, nationwide protests erupted across Iran — driven initially by economic despair, the collapse of the rial, and skyrocketing prices — but quickly morphing into open calls for regime change. The protests spread to over 100 cities and became the largest popular uprising in Iran since the 1979 revolution. The regime’s response was brutal. The U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency estimated the death toll at 7,000. Iranian government figures put it at 3,117. Trump claimed the number was 32,000. Whatever the precise count, the massacres were documented, widely reported, and deeply influential in shaping the decision to act.

Trump had given Tehran a window. He demanded a nuclear deal, set a clock, and sent two aircraft carriers — including the USS Gerald R. Ford — into the region as visible proof of intent. Nuclear talks in Geneva collapsed without an agreement. Even on the eve of the strikes, Oman’s Foreign Minister Badr Al-Busaidi reported that a “breakthrough” was within reach, claiming Iran had agreed to never stockpile enriched uranium and to submit to full IAEA verification.

The strikes began anyway with the U.S. stance on the issue being total removal of all enriched uranium from Iran. Secretary of State Marco Rubio had briefed the Gang of Eight — the top congressional leaders cleared for sensitive intelligence — on Friday night that the operation was likely to proceed within hours, while noting Trump could still reverse course. He did not.

The CIA’s intelligence assessment — that eliminating Khamenei would likely produce an IRGC-dominated successor regime rather than a democratic opening — cuts to the heart of the strategic gamble now underway. The IRGC is not simply a military force. It is the institutional backbone of the Islamic Republic, a parallel state within a state with its own economic empire, intelligence apparatus, and ideological mission to protect Shiite clerical rule at all costs. For decades, American strategists have debated whether decapitation of authoritarian regimes produces liberation or merely succession. Iraq and Libya offer cautionary precedents. Iran’s situation is arguably more institutionalized, more ideologically entrenched, and more prepared for exactly the kind of succession crisis a strike on Khamenei might trigger.

That said, the CIA’s assessment was not a verdict. Intelligence officials briefed on the reports were careful to note that no scenario was concluded with certainty. The Islamic Republic is under unprecedented pressure — from within and without. Its proxy network, built over decades through Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis, and various Iraqi militias, has been severely degraded by Israeli operations over the past two years. Its nuclear program was struck by the U.S. and Israel in June of last year. Its economy is in freefall. Its people took to the streets by the millions and were shot for it. The regime that emerges from Operation Epic Fury — if it emerges at all — will not be the same one that entered it.

Reuters reported that several IRGC commanders may have been killed in the strikes, though confirmation remained elusive in the chaotic initial hours. Israeli military and regional sources told the outlet that Defense Minister Aziz Nasirzadeh and IRGC commander Mohammad Pakpour were likely killed in Israeli airstrikes. Khamenei himself was reportedly cut off from contact during the operation and relocated to a secure site. He had not been seen publicly in the days prior to the attack.

Iran’s retaliation was swift and broad. The IRGC launched dozens of ballistic missiles across the Middle East, targeting Israel and U.S. military installations in Jordan, Syria, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. The Houthis in Yemen announced they would resume attacks on Red Sea shipping. Explosions were heard from Dubai to Doha. Iraq, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, and the UAE closed their airspace.

Major international airlines — Lufthansa, Virgin Atlantic, Wizz Air, Air India — suspended Middle East service through at least March 7. Bahrain reported that Iran targeted the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet headquarters. One person was killed in the UAE by shrapnel from an Iranian missile. The scale of Iran’s response suggested a regime trying to use its missile arsenal before more of it is eliminated.

World reaction split along predictable lines. Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney expressed support for U.S. efforts to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. France’s Emmanuel Macron warned of “grave consequences for international peace and security.” The European Union called the situation “perilous.” Qatar, whose territory hosts Al Udeid Air Base — a major hub for American air power — condemned the Iranian missile attacks as “a flagrant violation of national sovereignty.” The International Committee of the Red Cross warned that military escalation was “igniting a dangerous chain reaction across the region.” Iran’s parliament national security chief Ebrahim Azizi posted on social media: “We warned you! Now you have started down a path whose end is no longer in your control.”

The timing was notable on multiple levels. The operation was launched during Ramadan, the Muslim holy month of daytime fasting. It came just days before the Jewish holiday of Purim. Israeli officials, according to reporting, were aware of both when authorizing the strike. The political symbolism — deliberate or not — will reverberate across the Muslim world and be leveraged by the Iranian government in whatever messaging campaign it mounts in the days ahead.

The question that the CIA’s assessment raises — and that no one in Washington has answered publicly — is what success looks like here. Trump has spoken of regime change, of the Iranian people taking over their own government, of destroying Iran’s missile program and preventing a nuclear weapon. Those are three distinct objectives that may or may not be achievable simultaneously, and may even work against each other. Destroying military infrastructure and decapitating leadership does not automatically produce a pro-Western democratic successor. It can just as easily produce chaos, a hardened theocratic counterreaction, or — as the intelligence community apparently assessed — an IRGC-run state that is more militaristic, more hostile, and less restrained by the aging clerical establishment Khamenei represents.

None of that means the strikes were demonstrably wrong. The Iranian regime has sponsored terrorism across four decades, pursued nuclear weapons in defiance of the international community, massacred its own citizens in the streets, and spent generations treating American lives and American interests as legitimate targets. The argument for action is not trivial. Nor is the argument that years of diplomacy, sanctions, and limited strikes produced an Iran that grew more dangerous, not less. Trump’s theory — that overwhelming force, combined with direct appeals to the Iranian people, could produce a historic rupture — may yet prove correct. History has surprised analysts before.

But the CIA’s quiet assessment is worth sitting with. It wasn’t a recommendation against action. It was a sober read of what happens next if the stated goal is achieved. If Khamenei dies in these strikes, or is removed in the aftermath, the institution most likely to fill that vacuum is the same institution currently firing missiles at American military bases across six countries. That is not a reason for paralysis. It is a reason for clarity — about what this operation is actually trying to accomplish, how long it will take, and what the United States is prepared to do when the IRGC doesn’t simply lay down its arms in response to a Trump video at 2:30 in the morning.

The operation, by all accounts, is expected to last several days. Officials have described it as more sustained and broader than the limited strikes of June 2025. The U.S. military is not in and out. Whatever comes next — further Iranian retaliation, a regional escalation, a sudden internal collapse of the regime, or a negotiated pause — the Middle East as of today is a fundamentally different place than it was the day before. Operation Epic Fury is underway. The CIA’s warning is now in the rearview mirror. What lies ahead is something no intelligence assessment can fully anticipate.