The US and Israeli surprise attack on Iran has had a huge early success by killing the Iranian spiritual leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, along with several senior Iranian officials. Retaliation in the shape of missiles fired towards Israel and US bases in the region, and Arab Gulf states, has so far proved less effective than expected. 

Much depends on how far the surviving Iranian leadership can ride out this early disaster while retaliating effectively to the US-Israeli onslaught. Air strikes were continuing across Iran on Sunday; a huge explosion in the centre of Tehran sending an immense plume of smoke into the air.

If the US and Israel are able to degrade Iran’s military capacity to the point that it has to agree to something close to capitulation, then Washington and Tel Aviv will have disposed of the last powerful nation state capable of opposing them in the Middle East. Foreign powers such as Russia, the UK and France, which were once important players in the region, have become marginalised spectators in an escalating series of wars waged by Israel with American backing since the Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October 2023. 

A remarkable feature of the assassination of Khamenei is that he and senior security officials, such as the army chief of staff and defence minister, alongside the head of the Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), should have apparently been attending a meeting of the security council in Khamenei’s compound when they were hit by an Israeli missile strike.

The CIA knew the time and place of the meeting, according to The New York Times, and the continuing diplomatic negotiations overseen by Oman may have been a ruse to put the Iranians off their guard. Even so, it is astonishing that Iranian security measures were penetrable as effectively on Saturday as they........

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