Former head of the information and analysis directorate of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, retired Lieutenant General Leonid Reshetnikov, believes the killing of Ali Khamenei, the leader of one of the world’s major states, has «opened Pandora’s box».

He argues that after this, assassination attempts on any head of state — including Donald Trump himself — are effectively being normalized, and that the old rules no longer apply. Reshetnikov recalls that, in his view, the lid of this «box» was first lifted during the attempted abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, but now the American leader has, as he puts it, thrown it wide open. He also remarked that the elimination or capture of top officials of foreign states has long been part of the practice of the United States and the United Kingdom, and described it as an «age-old» tradition for the British.

Reshetnikov maintains that U.S. actions in Iran fit into a familiar pattern: the removal of a head of state followed by the country’s descent into internal chaos. In his opinion, the only thing that could derail the operation attributed to Trump and Tel Aviv would be the mobilization of Iranian society and the country’s elites around the idea of saving the state from collapse.

He further noted that the history of assassination attempts on presidents is well known inside the United States itself, and argued that this inevitably affects the mindset of ordinary Americans.