Iran has established a three-person temporary leadership council to govern the country following the killing of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Saturday’s US-Israeli strikes. The council will lead under Islamic law while a panel of Shia clerics selects a new supreme leader, a process that has no fixed timeline and no modern precedent. The country has declared 40 days of public mourning.
The immediate question is whether the violence escalates further. Iran launched retaliatory strikes across eight countries within hours of the initial attack, targeting US military bases and Israeli facilities. At least 40 buildings in Tel Aviv were damaged. Three American soldiers were killed and five seriously wounded. Casualties were reported in the UAE, Kuwait, Iraq, and Bahrain. Most attacks on Gulf state territory were intercepted by air defence systems, but not all.
The strikes on Gulf states are a significant escalation. Iran did not just hit Israel and American targets in the region; it struck sovereign nations that were not party to the initial attack. The governments of Bahrain, Kuwait, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE all confirmed they had been targeted. That turns what might have been framed as a bilateral conflict into something much wider and more dangerous.
President Trump told CNBC that military operations were “ahead of schedule” and that strikes on Iran would persist “until peace is secured.” Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu reportedly pushed for the operation alongside American forces. Analysts at Al Jazeera have argued that the strikes primarily benefit Israel rather than the United States.
What happens next depends on decisions being made in Tehran by people who may not have expected to be making them. A leadership vacuum in a country of 88 million people with a significant military capability and proxies across the region is not a recipe for stability. The international community has called for restraint, but restraint requires someone with the authority to exercise it. Whether Iran’s temporary council has that authority, or the inclination to use it, is the question that will determine whether this weekend’s violence was the beginning of something far worse.