FUSA | NATIONAL SECURITY & FOREIGN POLICY REPORT
Khamenei is dead and an interim council is already in place. The IRGC is already firing back. The Venezuelan regime is watching. Cuba is counting its dead. This is not a pattern of strength. It is a pattern of catastrophic half-measures that has handed three hostile governments the same gift: a reason.
By Marcus J. Delacroix
FUSA Senior Correspondent, National Security and Geopolitical Risk
March 1, 2026
The facts and analysis in this article are verified and drawn from CNN, NPR, NBC News, Al Jazeera, the Atlantic Council, the Stimson Center, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the International Crisis Group, The Conversation, Newsweek, Wikipedia’s sourced entry on the 2026 U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran, and the RAND Corporation, cross-referenced through AI-assisted multi-source analysis. Nothing here is manufactured or disputed.
Donald Trump has now done it twice in sixty days. He walked into a hostile regime, killed its leader, declared victory, and left the machinery of that regime completely intact and burning with fury. In January it was Venezuela. On February 28 it was Iran. And in both cases, the result is the same: a wounded, humiliated government still in power, still armed, and now with a cause.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s Supreme Leader for 36 years, was killed in the opening wave of Operation Epic Fury on Saturday, February 28, 2026. U.S. and Israeli forces struck his compound in Tehran along with targets in at least eight other Iranian cities. Trump declared it a triumph. He told the Iranian people to take over their government. He called on the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to lay down their arms or face certain death.
None of those things happened. Within hours, Iran formed a three-person constitutional leadership council as required under Article 111 of its constitution. It includes President Masoud Pezeshkian, Chief Justice Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei, and Ayatollah Alireza Arafi, a senior cleric and longtime Guardian Council insider who is now widely seen as the frontrunner to become the next Supreme Leader. Arafi has spent his career at the heart of Iran’s clerical establishment. He was appointed to multiple senior positions by Khamenei himself. There is no moderate waiting in the wings. There is no popular revolution materializing in the streets. Iran’s own foreign minister told NBC News directly that regime change was, in his words, “mission impossible.”
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the most ideologically committed and operationally capable element of the Iranian state, was not destroyed. It was enraged. Within hours of the strikes, the IRGC announced what it called its most intense offensive operation in the history of the Islamic Republic. Iran launched missiles and drones at U.S. military bases in Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, the UAE, Jordan, and Iraq. It struck civilian airports in Kuwait and the UAE. It fired on British military bases in Cyprus. The United Arab Emirates military reported intercepting over 100 ballistic missiles and nearly 200 drones in a single day. The IRGC explicitly vowed that air raid sirens over American bases would “not stop.” This is not a government that has surrendered. This is a government that has been handed an existential grievance and is acting on it.
The Atlantic Council, one of the most sober security analysis institutions in the world, warned immediately that Iran had almost certainly prepared for this day. Its analysts noted that the IRGC and Iranian intelligence have the capability to conduct assassinations, terror attacks, cyberattacks, kidnappings, and sabotage against civilian and military targets in countries as far-flung as Albania, Argentina, Sweden, and the United States. The Stimson Center was equally blunt: airpower can kill commanders, it noted, but it cannot reorder domestic politics. Despite a century of promises to the contrary, it has never by itself toppled a government.
Trump promised the Iranian people liberation. What they have instead is a new leadership council, an intact and mobilized IRGC, and a 40-day national mourning period that will be used to consolidate anti-American sentiment into whatever comes next. The pattern is identical to what happened in Venezuela two months ago. U.S. forces captured Nicolás Maduro. Trump declared that America would run Venezuela until a proper transition took place. Two months later, Maduro’s vice president Delcy Rodríguez holds power, the same generals control the military, the same courts control the judiciary, the same intelligence apparatus controls the streets. RAND Corporation said it plainly in the Venezuelan context: regime decapitation does not equal regime change. That phrase now applies to two countries simultaneously.
Which brings us to Cuba. When U.S. forces struck Venezuela in January, Cuba lost 32 soldiers in the operation. The Cuban government held a state ceremony in their honor. Cuba’s intelligence services spent two decades helping to build and train Venezuela’s own security apparatus. That relationship did not end with Maduro’s capture. And Cuba, Venezuela, and Iran have long maintained strategic ties rooted in a shared hostility to the United States and a shared interest in undermining American power wherever possible.
These three governments now share something else: a fresh wound and a direct motive. Venezuela’s Chavista regime watched its president dragged out in handcuffs. Cuba buried its soldiers. Iran is watching its leadership council form under fire while the IRGC prepares its next wave of retaliation. The question security analysts are asking is not whether these governments will seek to respond. It is how, where, and through which networks they will do it.
The answer to that last question is well-established. Iran’s proxy architecture, which includes Hezbollah, the Houthis, Hamas, and Kataib Hezbollah in Iraq, remains substantially intact. The Houthi leader declared his forces in a state of high readiness. Kataib Hezbollah threatened to begin attacking U.S. bases in response to what it called American aggression. Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua gang, which originated inside Venezuelan prisons under the Maduro government and is now designated a Foreign Terrorist Organization, is already documented in over a dozen U.S. states. Cuba’s intelligence services have operated inside the United States for decades. The infrastructure of retaliation is not something that needs to be built. It already exists.
Trump told the American people these operations would make them safer. The evidence as of today points in the opposite direction. He has, in the space of sixty days, given three hostile governments with deep intelligence networks and extensive proxy reach the same message: that America will strike you without warning, kill your leaders, and then invite you to surrender. Not one of those governments has accepted the invitation. All three are now in a posture of active resistance, and all three have reasons to coordinate, share intelligence, and direct whatever retaliatory capacity they retain toward American targets both abroad and at home.
The Stimson Center put the core problem in the clearest terms available: this is a war launched without congressional approval, without serious public debate, and in the face of overwhelming international opposition. It is unconstitutional and unwise. But beyond the legal question is a strategic one that no administration official has yet answered publicly. What is the endgame? In Venezuela, there is no answer. In Iran, where the IRGC has already launched its sixth wave of retaliatory strikes as of this writing, there is no answer either. There is only the pattern: kill the leader, leave the regime, call it a win, and wait for what comes next.
References
1. CNN, “Who’s Running Iran Now That the Supreme Leader Is Dead?” March 1, 2026. cnn.com
2. Newsweek, “Who Is Ayatollah Alireza Arafi? What to Know About Iran’s Interim Leader,” March 1, 2026. newsweek.com
3. NPR, “Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Has Been Killed,” February 28, 2026. npr.org
4. NBC News, “Iran Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei Is Dead After U.S., Israel Attack,” live blog, February 28 to March 1, 2026. nbcnews.com
5. Atlantic Council, “Experts React: The US and Israel Just Unleashed a Major Attack on Iran. What’s Next?” February 28, 2026. atlanticcouncil.org
6. Stimson Center, “Experts React: What the Epic Fury Iran Strikes Signal to the World,” March 1, 2026. stimson.org
7. Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), “Operation Epic Fury and the Remnants of Iran’s Nuclear Program,” February 28, 2026. csis.org
8. The Conversation, “Iran Will Respond to US-Israeli Strikes as Existential Threats to the Regime — Because They Are,” February 28, 2026. theconversation.com
9. RAND Corporation, “Venezuela After Maduro: Q&A with RAND Experts,” February 3, 2026. rand.org
10. International Crisis Group, “Venezuela After Maduro: Transaction or Transition?” January 9, 2026. crisisgroup.org
11. Wikipedia, “2026 Israeli–United States Strikes on Iran,” citing CENTCOM, IDF, Reuters, Al Jazeera. Accessed March 1, 2026.
12. Wikipedia, “2026 United States Intervention in Venezuela,” citing Reuters, CNN, U.S. government statements. Accessed March 1, 2026.
13. OPFOR Journal, “Situation Report: The Road to War With Iran,” February 28, 2026. opforjournal.com