It is not an exaggeration to say the last few days in the Middle East have marked a paradigm shift for the region and, frankly, the world.
The US and Israel killing the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ali Khamenei – once unthinkable – became just another of a slew of decapitations in their unprecedented joint operation on Iran, which has killed hundreds in the country, including children.
The offensive has hollowed out the brutal military leadership and its affiliates across the region.
Even the building that houses Iran’s Assembly of Experts, which right now is attempting to choose a leader to replace Khamenei, was reportedly flattened by an air attack in the last few days.
Khamenei’s second and most beloved son, Mojtaba, 56, is the favourite in the running as successor. But what difference would it make if Israel follows through with its threat to assassinate whoever is picked to take over?
Instead, Donald Trump has been quick to urge Iranians, who have nowhere to hide under this unprecedented bombardment and are still recovering from a bloody state crackdown on protests, to leverage what he called the only chance “in generations” to “take over your government”.
Yet despite the gravity of a call like that, the US and Israel’s timeline for their operation in Iran, their actual endgame and, crucially, their vision of “the day after”, remain unclear. Or possibly, as some claim, it is almost deliberately non-existent.
Eagerly waiting in the wings is Reza Pahlavi, 65, the exiled son of the last Shah, deposed during the 1979 uprising that ushered in the Islamic Republic.
A year later, Pahlavi declared himself Shah in a bizarre coronation-in-exile in the Egyptian capital, but has since distanced himself from the notion of a return to Iran’s Peacock Throne.
Based in the US, he has instead tried to position himself as the imminent transitional leader of a new post-theocratic Iran, releasing stirring statements promising Iranians he would return soon. He is receiving some support inside and outside Iran.
But as retired American-Lebanese Colonel Abbas Dahouk, who served as a military adviser to the State Department and twice as US defence attaché to Saudi Arabia, puts it, for the US the Shah is not even a Plan B.
“He is maybe Plan D,” he adds.
“The US remembers we tried that, bringing people from the outside like [Ahmed] Chalabi and [Nour al] Maliki in Iraq – that doesn’t work,” he said. “We’re still paying the price today.”
Inside Iran, some of the only armed opposition forces within the country, like the Kurds, vehemently oppose the return of the monarchy, which they accuse of marginalising and repressing Iran’s minorities when in power.
