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 were eight months ago at the start of the 12-day Israel-Iran war in June 2025, when Israel decimated the Iranian military leadership, as well as many of its top nuclear scientists, many of them killed in their offices or family homes. 

But the second US-Israel attack on Iran differs in one significant respect from that eight months ago: the previously half-hidden military alliance between America and Israel is now fully in the open. Co-operation had always been close during the Israeli assault on Gaza, in which at least 70,000 Palestinians were killed. President Joe Biden, though he repeatedly called for a ceasefire, continued to supply Israel with the weapons it needed to continue the war.

Donald Trump no longer hides the fact that the US and Israel are acting in tandem, fighting an aggressive war against Iran whom they see as vulnerable because of its losses in the 12-day war, near economic collapse, and domestic protests bloodily suppressed in January.

US intelligence agencies privately deride Trump’s claim that Iran posed a threat to the US or anyone else. What now seems inevitable – whatever happens in the war – is that the Middle East is entering a period of prolonged turmoil under joint US-Israeli tutelage and not, as Trump is claiming, an era of peace.

Israel’s gains in the current war are apparent: it has what it has always wanted, full military alliance with the US against Iran. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu talks about bringing democracy and freedom to the Iranian people, but more in Israel’s interests would be “state collapse” and the fragmentation of Iran into hostile components like Syria, Lebanon and Libya.

Trump has claimed in a Truth Social post that the killing of Khamenei – “one of the most evil people in History” – gives Iranians their “greatest chance” to “take back” their country. Despite reports of some celebratory jubilation in Iran at the news of Khamenei’s death, the government showed in January that it will not hesitate to kill anti-regime protesters en masse.

A general uprising looks unlikely. Many Iranians may detest the regime, but on Saturday a US-Israeli air strike killed 148 people in a girls school in south Iran, according to a local prosecutor. The Iranian Red Crescent says that 201 people died and 747 were injured during the first day of bombing. Mounting civilian casualties will not enamour Iranians to those dropping bombs on them.

How strong is the regime itself? After the death of Khamenei, the Iranian cabinet promised that this “great crime will never go unanswered”, while the Revolutionary Guard threatened the “most intense offensive operation” ever, against Israel and American bases. So far most of the missiles fired have been shot down, but some do get through. It does not take much to cripple modern transport links.

Airlines have cancelled thousands of flights to and from the Gulf. Iran has effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz at the mouth of the Gulf, through which a fifth of the world’s crude oil and liquefied natural gas (LNG) is exported. Giant tankers have been making U-turns to avoid the narrow channel, as insurance companies withdraw cover for the passage. The Houthis in Yemen, one of Iran’s few allies, say they will again close the Bab al-Mandab strait into the Red Sea.

Though Trump speaks confidently of regime change, he might prefer a Venezuelan-type end to the crisis whereby an unchanged regime in Tehran becomes compliant to American wishes and remains in power.

Iran is ruled by a Shia Muslim theocracy, its popular support much shrunken since the Islamic Revolution that overthrew the Shah in 1979. Yet the religious core of the regime has not disappeared and remains tightly in control of the country’s power centres. This ideologically driven cadre will be very difficult to dislodge using air power alone.

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Though Iran is often accused in the West of fostering proxy paramilitary groups in Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen, these are in reality the local Shia communities in arms. Once they were effective allies of Iran against the US and Israel: in 1983 they blew up the US Marine barracks in Beirut with a suicide truck killing at least 241 US military personnel. But all these paramilitary groups have been badly battered by Israel with US support since the start of the Gaza war.

The killing of Khamenei and other officials is a serious blow to the regime, but not necessarily as fatal a one as Trump and several European expect. The Iranian government has long prepared for an effort to decapitate its leadership and has replacements waiting to take over. Importantly, the essential glue holding the regime together is religious: Shia Islam is a faith focused on the martyrdom of heroic leaders such as Hussain and Abbas, killed in the battle of Kerbala in 680AD.

Key questions remain: How long can Iran sustain the war and still hit back? How long will Trump want to fight a campaign which, the longer it goes on, the more his political opponents at home will portray it as the same kind of endless war in the Middle East that he very recently denounced?

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