These Are The Times That Try Men’s Souls

Honestly, the security issue around whether that's an Apple watch pales next to this makeshift non-SCIF. The president just started a war. He should be in DC, as should his natsec team, and he should have been on TV last night in the Oval - and without a dopey grandpa hat. https://t.co/Xz8dH1UnR7

— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) March 1, 2026

I can’t believe I have to keep saying this…

Khamenei is dead. Good.

But I have family in Iran. My dad is there right now. And I'm not celebrating yet. Here's why.

Iran built the most layered contingency plan on Earth for this exact moment. Four levels of succession for every key position. Pre-authorized military strikes.…

— Iman Jalali (@Stealx) February 28, 2026

Khamenei is dead. Good.

But I have family in Iran. My dad is there right now. And I'm not celebrating yet. Here's why.

Iran built the most layered contingency plan on Earth for this exact moment. Four levels of succession for every key position. Pre-authorized military strikes. Regional commanders who don't need orders from Tehran to act.

As you read this, there is already a new Supreme Leader. We just don't know who.

This isn't Maduro. The government didn't get overthrown. The system absorbed the hit. That's what it was designed to do.

Don't breathe yet. There's a long way to go.

But continuity of government is not an evil scheme by villains to thwart the forces of good. Venezuela still functions without Maduro. And it’s not because they made a “deal” with Trump. He hardly cares what happens there, anymore. Is it a surprise that Iran is a functioning government comparable to any in Europe or America, at least in its “contingency plans”?  I don’t like the way it functions, but this “head of the snake” analogy/analysis is for the birds. We didn’t have the 25th amendment when Lincoln was assassinated in a theater, nor when JFK was shot on the streets of Dallas. The deaths were shocking, but no one expected the government to suddenly collapse. In neither case did we have the formal chain of succession that we have now.

The real problem is the common level of stupid on the internet. So many people who seem to think government is what Trump thinks it is: a simple arrangement of one person in power and everyone else subservient. Remove that person, and the house of cards collapses until a new person puts it back together again. Maybe we just imagine that countries we know next to nothing about are “primitive” compared to us or Western Europe. Although some just hate Iran for their own reasons. But that just makes their analysis more suspect.

It’s a little scary how easy it is for most people to think like Trump.