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Source: https://www.jpost.com/jerusalem-report/article-888665
The System Khamenei Built Ended Up Killing Him
(Jerusalem Report) Aviram Bellaishe - Since 1989, Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei constructed a governing architecture with one purpose: no one could replace him, and no one could make a consequential decision without him. The Revolutionary Guards became an economic and military empire with its own institutional interest. Any meaningful nuclear concession required consent from bodies he had deliberately designed to be incapable of conceding. You build institutions that cannot capitulate because you trust no one. Then, when capitulation is the only path to survival, those institutions cannot act. There is a difference between being unwilling to concede and being structurally incapable of it. In February 2026, U.S. Envoy Steve Witkoff met through an Omani intermediary with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi. According to Israel's Channel 12, Witkoff reported that Iran's proposal was "bullshit designed to buy time." He was not describing a bridgeable gap. Trump set a deadline of 10-15 days. It passed Feb. 26 without a strike. Khamenei thought Trump wanted a deal more than a confrontation. He had watched every American president since Carter arrive loud and leave with a compromise. Trump himself pulled back from a strike in 2019 with planes already airborne. The expired deadline and continued talks told him there was still time. Surrender on American terms would have destroyed everything Khamenei had built. Death in an American-Israeli airstrike is exactly the story he spent his life constructing. The writer, vice president of the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs, served in senior government positions for 27 years.