“Beneath Israel’s bombs lies an unpopular and repressive Iranian regime that has spent billions of dollars on a nuclear program and on projecting the Islamic Revolution through armed regional proxies, while presiding over a domestic economic disaster and stifling paralysis,” the New York Times reports.
“An 86-year-old autocrat, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, rules this restive nation, as he has for 36 years, in his role as guardian of the revolution, a conservative calling at which he has proved adept. The supreme leader is no gambler. But his system, remote from a youthful and aspirational society, looks sclerotic to many, and he is now up against the wall.”