Op-ed: Iran’s supreme leader is dead or comatose. Everything else is smoke and mirrors

A mafia system without a godfather doesn’t immediately collapse: it fractures into infighting as rival oligarchic clans, once kept in line by a single strongman, turn on one another in a struggle for power and resources. That is Iran today, in the aftermath of the war.

Much of the media in the West wants you to believe the Islamic Republic has emerged “stronger” from the Iran War – but that conclusion is not correct. 

Of course, the regime itself sought to portray the crowds attending the week-long Soviet-style funeral for former supreme leader Ali Khamenei – eliminated on the first day of the war – as a display of elite unity, strength, and control.