As US joins Israel’s war against Iran, is Ayatollah’s time coming to end?

“We shall export our revolution to the whole world. Until the cry ‘there is no God but Allah’ resounds over the whole world, there will be struggle,” Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran, swore in 1970s.

In 1979, Khomeini put Iran on the path to destroy Israel and export the Islamic Revolution to the world. In 2025, his successor, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has his back to the wall and is staring at the potential collapse of his regime.

While Israel had already degraded the Iranian power to the extent that nearly all air defences had been taken out, the military brass had been wiped out, and many missile launchers and weapon storage sites had been destroyed, US airstrikes on Saturday struck a blow to Khamenei’s ultimate leverage of the nuclear programme.

The Islamic Republic is currently at its weakest point and Supreme Leader Khamenei does not have many options as the war is now not just with Israel but with the United States and the fear of the collapse of regime change is very real, says Alvite Ningthoujam, a scholar of West Asia at the School of International Studies (SIS), Symbiosis International University (SIU), Pune.

For decades, Iran did not draw power just from its military and intelligence apparatus, which was second in the region only to that of Israel, but also from the ‘Axis of Resistance’ it sponsored — the bloc comprised groups like Hamas, Hezbollah, and Houthis. The bloc stands battered and is in no position to help Iran.

For Israel, ‘Operation Rising Lion’ that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu launched last week was not a new war but merely the latest episode in the war that the Islamic Republic began in 1979, so the current state of the regime, whether it’s the degradation of proxies or strikes on its nuclear sites, is the result of its policies going back to the foundation of the regime, says Daphne Richemond Barak, a professor of international relations at the Lauder School of Government, Diplomacy and Strategy at Israel’s Reichman University.

Khamenei faces regime change fears as Trump & Netanyahu join hands

In a far cry from 1989 when Khamenei took over as the Supreme Leader of Iran and assumed the responsibility of destroying Israel, exporting the Islamic Revolution globally, and weakening the West, his sole responsibility has now been reduced to ensuring the survival of the regime.

Netanyahu, on the other hand, is hell-bent on toppling Ayatollah Khamenei’s regime and it remains to be seen if President Trump will support that objective as well, says Ningthoujam, the Deputy Director at SIS, Pune.

Regime change is, however, easier said than done. Unlike Iraq or Afghanistan, there is no indication that Israel or the United States are about to launch a ground offensive. Unlike Syria, there are no opposition forces whom they may support militarily and financially against the regime.

“Even as Supreme Leader Khamenei appears to be secure from immediate regime change, the threat is there and he is under unprecedented pressure, and it is under such pressure that he takes major actions. The future of the regime may rest on whether he now decides to fight to the end, develop a nuclear weapon, or make a deal to live to fight another day,” says Ningthoujam.

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The fate of Khamenei’s regime may rest on how the external pressure affects internal faultlines in Iran. It is no secret that Iranians despise the conservative, dictatorial regime — as was seen in 2022-23 when millions took to the streets in the monthslong uprising after the regime’s morality police murdered a young woman for purportedly not following the hijab law. However, the external pressure can work both ways.

While many accounts suggest that Iranians in and out of the country are quietly cheering at the weakening of the regime, some suggest that there is a brewing rallying around the flag effect as many Iranians interpret the Israeli offensive as not one directed at the regime but at the country.

The regime change in Iran may not be the same as Iraq or Afghanistan where an invading force overthrew the ruler or like Syria where armed groups opposed to the regime overthrew it, but could be much more subtle, suggests Ningthoujam.

“If the Supreme Leader is assassinated along with the remaining leaders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), there would be a leadership vacuum. The rise of a new crop of leaders would amount to a regime change. Even if the Supreme Leader remains but the regime is weakened and public anger against extremists swells, the moderates may come to power and give the country a new direction. That would be as good as regime change,” says Ningthoujam.

Khamenei has no good options

With his back to the wall, Khamenei has no good options.

Whether Khamenei makes a deal and surrenders the nuclear programme to ensure the regime’s survival or puts up a fight, the chances are that he would emerge as a loser both internally and externally.

If Khamenei gives up nuclear enrichment as the international community has demanded, he would give up his final leverage and risk meeting the same fate as Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, who gave up the weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programme in 2003 in a deal with the United States and United Kingdom and was still ousted in Western military intervention in 2011.

If Khamenei keeps his nuclear programme, he would risk plunging his country deeper into the conflict. Neither Netanyahu nor Trump would have any issue from bombarding Iran until it becomes a wasteland like the Gaza Strip.

ALSO READ: Inside Netanyahu’s campaign to destroy Iran’s bunker nuclear sites

Either way, Supreme Leader Khamenei would be at the risk of losing his legitimacy and that of the Islamic Republic and the Islamic Revolution, says Ningthoujam.

For Israel, however, Khamenei’s choice may not matter — at least for now.

Even though Prime Minister Netanyahu set the destruction of Iranian nuclear capabilities and the collapse of the Iranian regime as principal objectives, the main idea behind the offensive was the degradation of the Iranian regime and that has been achieved, says Prof. Barak, the international relations scholar at Israel’s Reichman University.

Critics of the US and Israeli actions have said that strikes on the Iranian nuclear programme would leave Khamenei with no choice but to make a nuclear weapon to restore deterrence as conventional deterrence stands eroded. Barak does not agree.

Barak says, “The attacks have degraded the Iranian ability to make nuclear weapons. Even if the knowledge continues to exist, the means no longer exist whether it is a strong regime at home or proxies abroad. There were four broad outcomes with Operation Rising Lion and at least three of them are about to be realised.”

Barak lists the four outcomes expected from the Operation Rising Lion at the onset: the United States entering the war on Israel’s sides and attacking Iran’s underground nuclear sites as that capability did not exist with Israel; Israeli strikes in the absence of direct US involvement setting back the Iranian nuclear programme by many years, making its revival next to impossible; Israeli strikes and possible US participation pushing Iran into making a deal favourable to Israel; and the chaos inside Iran from the war leading to an uprising against the regime.

While the first two potential outcomes have been achieved and the third may still be achieved as Trump has pitched the strikes as a way to bring Iran to the negotiating table. The fourth potential outcome depends on how the situation evolves.

“Until now, it was a proxy war. Now, Israel has gone for the head of the octopus — Iran is an octopus and not a snake. If you cut a tentacle, like Hezbollah or Hamas, it would regrow. Therefore, Israel has now struck the head of the octopus in Iran. The international community may be concerned about chaos at the fall of the regime in Iran, but Israel is not,” says Barak.