Dr. Trita Parsi

You cannot rule it out.

And you cannot also assertively or conclusively say that it was the factor.

But to completely dismiss the idea that this has something to do with it, I think would be problematic because there's no evidence to exclude it.

There's also no smoking gun evidence at this point that says this is the reason why this is happening.

undoubtedly would be tremendously significant if he were to be assassinated.

What would follow, however, is actually a little bit more difficult to predict.

First of all, there's a significant risk that the administration is well aware of that this will actually put a fire throughout the region because there are Shia populations in Iraq, in Lebanon, in Saudi, in Bahrain, in the UAE, in Pakistan, who view Khamenei

as a religious figure and as a religious leader, because he is a grand ayatollah or a marjah-e-tarnit.

So this is something that I know in the summer they were very concerned about, whether they have now completely dismissed that or not remains to be seen.

The Israeli argument has been that it is necessary to kill him to essentially kill an era, an era of the Islamic Republic.

It's symbolic in its value.

Now, what would follow?

I would presume that the Iranians already have decided the secession at this point.

In fact, they've declared that they decided the secession for several key posts about five lines down.

And that would be very odd if they were to do that, but not having done that for the Supreme Leader.

Could it erupt into protests on the streets in the sense that some people would think that this is an opportunity that absolutely also could happen?

What we have seen so far, and I think this is an important point to keep in mind,

We've not seen any such protests.

I spoke to someone in Tehran just before this show.

No scenes yet of people celebrating this in a large or in a significant number at all.