Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed earlier in the US and Israeli assault, but there are few signs yet that the regime he built is crumbling. Photo / Getty Images
The American and Israeli air campaign against Iran has decimated the highest ranks of political and military leadership, destroyed critical military command-and-control infrastructure and fighting capability, and damaged civilian buildings across the country.
In Tehran, the expanding conflict appears to be frustrating the succession process after Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed. Khamenei’s funeral was postponed after the group charged with choosing his successor was targeted by Israeli strikes. After that attack, Iranian state media announced that voting for the next leader would be conducted remotely.
But so far, some six days into a war that has now touched 12 countries across the Middle East, the United States and Israeli attacks have not threatened the regime’s grip on power, according to European and Arab assessments described anonymously to the Washington Post by officials from those countries.
Iran, they say, was prepared for this conflict. The command structures built to survive a decapitation strike appear to remain substantially intact, allowing retaliatory strikes against Israel, Qatar and Bahrain within hours of the initial attacks. Inside the country, Iranians have reported a heavier security presence in city streets, with Basij paramilitary forces patrolling on motorbikes.
“Iran’s senior leaders are dead; the so-called governing council that might have selected a successor dead, missing or cowering in bunkers, too terrified to even occupy the same room,” US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth said in a briefing yesterday touting successes as he outlined how operations would expand.
President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that the strikes killed “most of the people” the US favoured to replace the recently killed regime members.
But despite the intensity of the strikes and the broad nature of the destruction, so far there are no reports of significant defections within regime ranks or of popular uprisings, the European and Arab assessments say. US intelligence also saw no signs of uprisings or defections in the first days of the campaign, according to a person familiar with the situation.
“There’s not a single sign of anything in the system breaking or defecting. Nothing. Zero,” said a senior European official. “The control is complete.”
He said he was aware of reports of security forces failing to show up for duty, but believed that could be because of orders not to congregate in compounds and barracks, for fear of being targeted.
The officials said Iran’s military and political command had proved durable because of the “layered system” the regime had built to withstand a crisis, decentralising leadership by appointing multiple individuals to immediately replace any key figure who might be killed.
After Iranian Defence Minister Aziz Nasirzadeh was killed in weekend strikes, Majid Ebnelreza was appointed as the caretaker minister on Monday by Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, who was rumoured to have been targeted in the attack’s initial waves. Since then, reports have speculated that Ebnelreza had also been killed, but Iranian state media has not responded to the allegations.
Before the conflict, a senior Arab official said, US allies in the Persian Gulf thought that Iran would be more vulnerable to outside military pressure and that the potential killing of the Supreme Leader would be an early turning point, triggering a mass mobilisation against the regime.
“We were looking for the demonstrations in the streets, but we were surprised by their unity,” he said.
In January, as the regime buckled under massive anti-government protests and responded with a brutal crackdown, many of Iran’s neighbours assessed a deep weakness within the political and security leadership structures.
But the governance structure has largely stayed intact and continues to exert unilateral control, surprising seasoned observers in the region. The European and the Arab officials both cautioned that the regime remained opaque and its collapse could be almost impossible to anticipate from the outside.
Information on the impact of the US and Israeli attacks is sporadic. Iran is under a near-total internet blackout. But initial visual analysis by the Washington Post has revealed extensive damage to military targets, government buildings and internal security structures. Israel has also claimed strikes targeting Iran’s clerical establishment.
In total, US Central Command says, more than 2000 targets were hit inside Iran in the space of about four days. The Israel Defence Forces said its planes had dropped more than 4000 munitions on Iran since Saturday.
“Undoubtedly, Iran has been considerably weakened,” said Gregory Brew, an Iran analyst with the Eurasia Group. Most of its navy, a significant portion of its missile stockpile and its means of producing more missiles had all been destroyed.
“They’re blowing up a lot of buildings, but most of these buildings are probably empty. They’re annihilating the physical edifice of the Islamic republic.”
Meanwhile, Iran’s police force and the Basij have continued to function, according to Iranians inside the country, said the European official. Brew said that was because those forces did not use heavy weaponry and could quickly disperse from targeted buildings and re-emerge once the fighting ceased.
After the 12-day war in June, Iran structured its armed forces to anticipate further decapitation strikes. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi appeared to reference the reorganisation in an interview with Al Jazeera on Sunday, in which he described military units as “isolated” and acting on “general instructions given to them in advance”.
It is unclear how long Iran will be able to hold out. Earlier this week, the tempo of its retaliation dropped, suggesting it is running low on munitions or cannot access buried stockpiles.
However, yesterday saw heavy bursts of retaliatory attacks against Bahrain, Qatar and the UAE. As the conflict progresses and Iran’s armed forces are forced to adapt and draft new plans, the country’s leadership losses could become more serious.
But Iranian officials have signalled that they are prepared for a long fight against militarily superior adversaries. Tehran believes that the only way it can prevail is if it can outlast the US and Israel, according to a second European official.
“They understand that they will not be able to defeat the most powerful army in the world, but with asymmetric warfare, they can try to inflict as much damage as possible, to make the US seek de-escalation.”
That was why it had prioritised retaliation against Gulf nations that could begin to pressure the US to seek an off-ramp, he said.
Iran had wagered that its system and its people were more capable of enduring prolonged hardship than those of the US and Gulf states, he said. But he cautioned that, the longer the conflict lasted, the more deadly it was likely to become.
“This regime is built to last, and they aren’t going to go quietly.”
Warren Strobel, Evan Hill, Imogen Piper, Jarrett Ley and Meg Kelly contributed reporting.
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