Kuala Lampur, Feb. 28 -- Empires always believe they are writing history. More often, they are repeating it.

The reported killing of Iran's Supreme Leader has been greeted in some Western capitals with the language of destiny - the sense that a 46-year-old revolution has finally reached its expiration date, that a single strike in the night can achieve what sanctions, sabotage, assassinations and shadow wars could not.

Regime change.

Liberation.

A new Middle East.

It is a familiar script. We watched it under the desert sky of Baghdad. We watched it in the ecstatic early hours of Tripoli. We watched it in Kabul as the last aircraft clawed its way into the air, abandoning two decades of certainty.

Each time, the removal of a man was m...