Israel struck a compound on Tuesday where senior Iranian clerics were meeting to choose a successor to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed in an airstrike on Saturday. The strike targeted the heart of Iran's political succession process at its most vulnerable moment.
The attack fits Israel's broader strategy of inflicting maximum damage on Iran's leadership structure, "Hvylya" reports, citing the New York Times. Israeli officials have pushed for a weekslong campaign that would not only destroy Iran's military capabilities but potentially cause the government to collapse entirely.
The strike on the succession gathering carries enormous implications. Iran's supreme leader holds ultimate authority over the country's political, military and religious apparatus. With Khamenei dead and the clerics tasked with naming his replacement now targeted, the regime faces an unprecedented power vacuum at the top.
Israel has actively urged the United States to reject any diplomatic approaches from Tehran, preferring to continue the assault. Israeli officials do not want to see Trump engineer a negotiated solution that would leave figures from Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in power. The IRGC controls much of Iran's economy, and some analysts believe its ranks might include pragmatists less invested in the regime's fundamentalist principles than in preserving their own power and wealth.
Ahead of the strikes, the CIA produced an intelligence assessment examining various scenarios for what sort of Iranian leadership might emerge after the assault. People briefed on the analysis noted that none of the scenarios carried a high degree of confidence - there were simply too many unknown variables to predict how events would unfold.
Also read: Iran Begins Leadership Transition as Council Deliberates Ali Khamenei's Successor