The world’s autocrats, from Vladimir Putin to Xi Jinping, will surely be sleeping a little less easy after the death of Iran’s supreme leader in an operation backed by Donald Trump.
But the US decision to go to war with Iran without any attempt to gain international approval – or even the endorsement of Congress – sets a dangerous precedent for the unilateral use of force to achieve foreign policy goals, which could make the whole planet a lot less safe.
Iran latest: Supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei is dead
None of America’s Western allies, including the UK, will mourn the demise of Ali Khamenei, 86, who was killed by Israeli airstrikes against his compound in Tehran on Saturday at the start of a blitz of missiles and drones launched by the US and Israel.
Yet the move – which comes less than two months after US forces launched a deadly raid into Venezuela to capture its strongman ruler – further reduces the threshold for any country to deem it acceptable to lob bombs against another sovereign state to resolve a dispute.
“We are in an era of great power politics and this is what it looks like,” Rob Johnson, the head of the Changing Character of War Centre at Oxford University, told me.
The consequences of Mr Trump’s Iran gamble are still playing out.
Paranoia and absolute power: Ali Khamenei led Iran with supreme self-confidence
Iranians take to streets with different reactions to death of supreme leader Ali Khamenei
Starmer is cautious on Iran because he knows the chaos Trump’s strikes could trigger
But three things are already very clear.
Firstly, this intervention – especially as it will most likely not be condemned by the UK and other NATO allies, given they hate the Iranian regime almost as much as the US – will make it a lot harder for the West to criticise the legitimacy of similar attacks launched by their opponents.
For example, Mr Putin can now brush off as double standards the fiery condemnation by Sir Keir Starmer, Emmanuel Macron and Friedrich Merz of his full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
President Xi of China will also be watching events in the Middle East closely and most likely drawing the conclusion that he now has a far freer hand to capture Taiwan by force.
At the same time, a second certainty that world leaders will understand with renewed clarity is the importance of military strength to shore up their survival.
This is especially true for those who seek to defy whoever has the strongest armed forces – which for now at least is the US under Mr Trump.
It sets the stage for even greater militarisation of the world’s most powerful countries and the need for smaller and middling powers to club ever closer together – an observation made by Mr Merz at a major security conference in Munich last month.
Listen to The World with Richard Engel and Yalda Hakim every Wednesday
Finally, and perhaps most profoundly, is the undeniable unravelling of a set of international rules that evolved from the ashes of the Second World War and are upheld by the United Nations to protect the sovereignty of all countries and the dignity of all people.
With Mr Trump establishing his own so-called “Board of Peace” to rival the UN, the old world order that has existed for decades has never seemed so challenged.
As for what comes next in Iran, it is very hard to predict.
The regime is reeling from the loss of its leader and has vowed its largest ever retaliation, though Mr Trump says the response so far – with Iranian missiles and drones fired against Israel as well as Gulf states where US forces are based – is weaker than anticipated.
The US president, who likes the simplicity of bold statements, is already able to portray the mission as having achieved success following the killing of Khamenei.
Read more:
How have Iranians reacted to death of supreme leader?
One dead and others injured at Abu Dhabi and Dubai airports
Be the first to get Breaking News
Install the Sky News app for free
But Iran’s fate is not a short, self-contained, made-for-social-media news story.
As history shows, there is huge peril in any foreign intervention and the consequences of the United States decapitating the Iranian regime will only truly be understood over time.
