Iranian authorities have announced a three-member interim council to run the government amid the unprecedented joint U.S.-Israeli operations that took out both Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and several other senior officials.
The three council members will be Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian; the chief justice of the Supreme Court, Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei; and a member of the Guardian Council, Ayatollah Alireza Arafi. This decision is outlined in the country’s constitution.
It comes after the United States and Israel killed dozens of senior leaders in the opening salvo of the conflict on Saturday morning. In addition to killing Khamenei, the Israeli military intelligence directorate, Shlomi Binder, said they were “able to create tactical surprise, eliminating over 40 of the most important individuals in Iran in under 40 seconds.”
Khamenei had been in power since 1989 after being appointed by the 88-member clerical assembly, known as the Assembly of Experts, that holds the authority to appoint a new supreme leader, and that group will now need to figure out a successor.
The assembly has only picked a successor once after the 1979 Iranian Revolution, and that was after the death of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the supreme leader from 1979 until 1989.
There is also the possibility that any selected successor could become a target for new Israeli or U.S. strikes.
Prior to the current conflict, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was one of the most powerful, influential, and feared institutions in Iran, playing a significant role in the country’s projection of power both domestically and abroad.
The Guard, which has between 150,000-190,000 personnel, consists of ground, naval, and air forces; an internal security apparatus, an external operations force, and the Quds Force, which is responsible for the organization’s covert activities abroad, according to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s counterterrorism guide. The internal security entity, known as the Basij, is responsible for killing thousands of protesters in late 2025 and early 2026, which prompted international outrage.
President Donald Trump has also acknowledged that the U.S. does not know who is leading the country currently outside of the president, who had been in a deferential role to the supreme leader.
Trump told CNN, “We don’t know who the leadership is. We don’t know who they’ll pick. Maybe they’ll get lucky and get someone who knows what they’re doing,” and he added, “Those were the leaders, and some of them were being considered.”
Iranian leaders “got a little bit arrogant” by all meeting in the same location, Trump said. “They thought they were undetectable. They weren’t undetectable. We were shocked by it.”
Following the initial strikes, Iran quickly began its retaliation, firing missiles and attack drones at U.S. bases throughout the Middle East, which angered those countries, and targeting Israel directly. They have targeted U.S. assets in the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman, Jordan, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia.
The Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, indicated that some units within the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps are acting independently from the central government apparatus.
“As a matter of fact, our, you know, military units are now in fact independent and somehow isolated, and they are acting based on instructions — you know, general instructions — given to them in advance,” he told Al Jazeera.
Without a clear leadership structure, it will be difficult for the U.S. to negotiate an end to the conflict and to get any rogue unit to comply, though Araghchi could also be trying to distance himself from the Iranian retaliatory attacks.
In the first three days of the conflict, six American service members were killed in an Iranian attack, though the Pentagon has not said where in the region they were. Several others were seriously injured. War Secretary Pete Hegseth said they were in a fortified tactical operation center when it was hit by an Iranian projectile. Separately, two Pentagon employees were injured in an Iranian drone strike on a hotel in Bahrain, according to a State Department cable reviewed by the Washington Post.
The Qatari air force shot down two Iranian SU-24 bomber jets, seven ballistic missiles, and five drones on Monday, according to a statement from the country’s foreign ministry.
DAN CAINE SAYS ADDITIONAL FIREPOWER HEADED TO MIDDLE EAST AND HEDGES OPERATION TIMELINE
Kuwaiti air defenses accidentally shot down three American F-15E Strike Eagles aircraft, but all six pilots ejected, were found, and are in stable condition. There is an investigation into the incident.
American leaders have warned that the U.S. will likely have more casualties as Iran continues to retaliate across the region.