It doesn’t matter whether a monster is killed by someone with noble intentions or a monster is killed by another monster.

It does matter. It matters. And it’s so, so important that people understand that it matters. This attitude of, “the ends justify the means,” is very dangerous. The Iranian nation has had their autonomy taken away from them, first by Khamenei and now by the US and Israel. They are powerless, subject to the whims of people more powerful than them. They don’t make their own decisions about their own nation, the decisions are made for them by people who have enough guns and strongmen to impose their will on them.

Edit: think of it like this: let’s say you’re living down the street from a family with an abusive father. The guy is just cruel to his wife and kids. So one day you decide to take matters into your own hands and you go and shoot the dad dead. That’s good, right? The cruel, abusive father is dead, so it’s good and justified, right? But you didn’t ask the wife or the kids if they wanted their father to be killed. You didn’t care what they wanted, because you didn’t do it for them. You did it for you. You did it because it was what YOU wanted. And if they get mad at you for it, you say oh they’re just ingrates. They don’t appreciate what I did for THEM. But, it wasn’t for them. It was never for them. It was for you.

Edit 2: so what would the alternative be? What could we do to stop this cruel father that doesn’t require us to take matters into our own hands? Law. We need the rule of law. What would any reasonable person in a modern society do in this situation? They’d call the police. That’s what we need: the rule of law. Not countries deciding unilaterally who lives and who dies, but laws. Laws that apply to all of us, equally.

I’m glad he’s dead, but the fear is that this creates an even worse situation.

Attempts to remove a dictator by force are usually not possible without a lengthy occupation. There’s no new government or leaders ready to form a new government that is better for the Iranian people. An occupation is also unlikely to have good results. This isn’t reforming Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan, this is something else entirely. I would expect the people of Iran to not respond well to aggressors occupying their country. This is at best Afghanistan 2, but likely worse

We don’t need to mourn the monster killed by monsters, but we SHOULD remember that even in this short time many innocents have also been killed in the process.