"Khamenei's Elimination Shocked Putin."
- 4.03.2026, 14:31
- 4,248
The bunker doesn't seem like a safe place anymore.
The successful operation to eliminate Iranian leader Ali Khamenei has shocked Kremlin dictator Vladimir Putin. Why? Because until recently he had been convinced that top leaders remain untouchable, no matter what crimes they have committed. Thus, Putin instantly realized that he was vulnerable and defenseless, no matter what protected bunker he hid in.
Another frightening revelation for the Kremlin is that the task of regime change in a country ruled by a dictatorship is actually quite feasible. If the events in Iran do indeed lead to the coming to power of democratic forces, for Putin it will mean that similar changes are possible in Russia.
This opinion in an exclusive interview with OBOZ.UA was expressed by Russian opposition activist Olga Kurnosova.
- Now in the media you can often see headlines like "Putin shocked by Khamenei's elimination". But is this really the case? After all, it was surely not a surprise to the Kremlin. They live in the paradigm that first persons of state cannot be eliminated. Let me remind you how much Putin was shocked and frightened by the liquidation of Gaddafi (Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi was liquidated in 2011 by NATO forces. - Ed.) Actually, his entire fight against the opposition was largely the result of the terrible fright when he saw all this.
That is why Putin cannot help but realize that the CIA knows perfectly well where he is at every moment in real time. So eliminating Putin is an absolutely solvable task. And what we are now seeing in Iran is a very important, I would say the most important case study of how regime change can be accomplished. This is what the Kremlin fears most of all, this is what Putin personally fears most of all.
We have already seen the story of Venezuela, when it was enough to remove one Maduro from the country, so that immediately all the others, to be frank, began to speak and act under the dictation of the United States. And in every sense - they stopped supplying oil to Cuba and declared a full political amnesty. I think that many more interesting things will happen in Venezuela, and gradually the country will become sane and normal enough for its own people.
But Iran is a much more complicated story. It is clear that Khamenei is not the only one who has been liquidated, there are many others. But apart from what is happening in Iran now, the destruction of air defense and full control over the airspace of the United States-Israel joint group is of great importance. There are a huge number of heavy drones hanging over the country, which can strike anyone if necessary.
- Probably the main question that arises in connection with this series of eliminating dictatorships is how Trump will act. As far as I understand, virtually everything here depends on the US president personally. But we also see that he treats Putin somewhat differently, to put it mildly, than the dictators listed above. Do you think that under a certain set of circumstances, Trump could actually, at the very least, demonstrate to Putin that he is vulnerable and approachable wherever he is, and fire a "warning shot"?"
- We don't know how Trump really feels about Putin. All the stories that he loves him or whatever are hypothesis, after all, not a certainty at all. I generally believe that what we see, this public Trump, is a mask, it's a game.
And we can already understand how tactically Trump acts. He creates some kind of distraction - in this case, it's a negotiation. Moreover, this is the second time this has happened. The first time the negotiations were supposed to take place was when the Americans hit Iran's nuclear storage facilities. The second time negotiations were also underway, and at that moment a very serious attack was being prepared.
Trump said that the operation could last quite a long time, up to four weeks. But we realize that is a very long time, a lot can be done in four weeks. So we do not understand for ourselves yet what real goal Trump has set.
I hope - and this is very important - that he has set the goal of regime change in Iran. And it is not necessarily that Trump sees Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi as the head of state, but someone else, perhaps even some of the incumbents in Iran who would nonetheless be willing to do very different things, who would be willing to democratize the country and economically put Iran among the other countries in the Middle East.
Remark the article that The Washington Post published about Trump being persuaded to strike at the same time by the Crown Prince of Saddam Arabia Muhammad bin Salman and Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. Such a seemingly strange duo. Because today's Iranian ayatollahs are a bone in the throat for all Middle Eastern countries, not just Israel.
- In your opinion, what did the Kremlin lose by losing Khamenei? In this context, of course, there is also the question of whether the dictatorship will remain in Iran. What does the Kremlin lose if the dictatorship remains in place, and what does it lose if the dictatorship is completely overthrown?
- The most important thing is not even what the Kremlin loses - and the Kremlin has already lost a lot of things, because we are sure that nuclear technology appeared in Iran with Moscow's encouragement or participation. Actually, Sergei Kiriyenko was quite actively involved in this as the former head of Minatom, who retained full control over this structure. Now it is called the Agency for Atomic Energy.
We understand perfectly well that although it is called by a different name, but in fact, as in Soviet times, when it was called the Ministry of Medium Machine Building, the main task of this structure was the production of nuclear components, nuclear fuel, stuffing for nuclear bombs.
That is why, of course, the advancement that Iran has made towards the possession of nuclear weapons would not have been possible without Moscow. Accordingly, today these efforts by Moscow are multiplied by zero. Of course, the Russian Federation wants to increase the number of dictatorships possessing nuclear weapons. Nevertheless, these efforts have already led nowhere in terms of Iran.
But there is another, most important component. In fact, this is a kind of test case, how it is possible to carry out regime change in a country that is big enough, bigger than Venezuela. If it succeeds - and I hope it does, because the most important thing is that Trump does not stop halfway, that the ayatollah regime is overthrown and the country is on the path to restoring democracy - then this possibility of changing and destroying dictatorships will become a real case study that works.
And this is the worst thing for the Kremlin. Because Putin is not an idiot, he understands perfectly well that if it works in Iran, if there are people within the Iranian elite who are ready for change, then there will be people within the Russian elite. I am not talking about emigrants. There are many among them who are ready to restart the country under democratic slogans. So, of course, Putin will realize that something similar can be done in Russia.
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