After Khamenei’s assassination, is Iran heading toward orderly succession or a dangerous civil war?

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is dead. The man who acted as the Islamic Republic’s final firewall for more than three decades was gone in a single morning. But here’s the real question: did Washington and Tel Aviv just decapitate a regime or detonate a region? From the killing of Qasem Soleimani in 2020 to the assassinations of figures tied to Hamas and Hezbollah, Iran’s leadership circle had been shrinking. Now the ultimate red line has been crossed. So what happens next? Who replaces the most powerful unelected man in the Middle East? Can the Assembly of Experts agree on a successor while missiles are still in the sky? Is Mojtaba Khamenei waiting in the wings? Could the exiled Reza Pahlavi seize the moment? Or does this spiral into a regional war pulling in the Gulf? This episode breaks down the succession mechanism, the power vacuum inside Tehran, and why regime change rarely unfolds the way foreign powers imagine.