If not liberated, Iranians woke up on Sunday to a stark new reality, as Iranian authorities confirmed that the sweeping round of strikes had killed Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, along with a cadre of other top officials. Khamenei, a clerical despot driven by rigid dogma and a ruthless instinct for survival, had been in power since the fall of the Soviet Union, his legacy shaped by years of geopolitical isolation, the shadow wars he waged abroad, and the uprisings he quashed at home. Trump cheered the news in a social-media post: “Khamenei, one of the most evil people in History, is dead.” In Iran, a state television anchor declared that “the leader of the great nation of Iran, the vanguard of the Islamic Ummah, his excellency Imam Khamenei drank the nectar of martyrdom and in the month of Ramadan ascended to the highest heaven.” A trio of surviving officials—President Masoud Pezeshkian; the judiciary chief Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei; and a jurist from the Guardian Council, Iran’s constitutional watchdog—will guide a transition.