Good morning. Over the weekend the US and Israel launched a series of attacks on Iran that resulted in the assassination of Tehran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei – a move that dramatically raised the stakes in their long-running conflict.
The assassination of a serving supreme leader is an extraordinary act – one that signals not containment, but confrontation. Retaliatory strikes by Iran have already spilled the conflict far beyond its borders, drawing a host of regional powers into the fray. Iranian president, Masoud Pezeshkian, the judiciary chief, Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei, and senior cleric Alireza Arafi will reportedly lead Iran in the transitional period following Khamenei’s death.
