The Electoral Act 2026 has been signed by President Bola Tinubu just about one year ahead of the 2027 general elections.
But what are the implications for voters and next year’s election? The Citizens’ Townhall on the Electoral Act will explore these and many other burning issues concerning the law.
Politicians, civil society organisations, and several others are live on the show to deal with these questions.
Guests at the event include INEC Chairman Joash Amputan; Oby Ezekwesili; Sen. Ireti Kingibe; APC chairman, Nentawe Yilwatda; Nenadi Usman of the LP, among others.
The United States military has announced that at least three service members have been killed in its operation against Iran.
US Central Command (CENTCOM) said in a statement that five others have been “seriously wounded” in the operation.
“Several others sustained minor shrapnel injuries and concussions — and are in the process of being returned to duty. Major combat operations continue and our response effort is ongoing,” it added.
“The situation is fluid, so out of respect for the families, we will withhold additional information, including the identities of our fallen warriors, until 24 hours after next of kin have been notified,” it added.
CENTCOM also announced that US forces had struck an Iranian warship in the Gulf of Oman.
The Jamaran-class corvette “is currently sinking to the bottom of the Gulf of Oman at a Chah Bahar pier,” CENTCOM said, referring to a location in southern Iran.
At least nine people have died in Iran’s missile strike on the Israeli town of Beit Shemesh, as Iran continued retaliatory attacks against Israel and United States military assets across several Middle Eastern countries after Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed in an Israel-US strike.
Residents of Tel Aviv reported hearing loud explosions, which were either from missile strikes or defence system interceptions. Israeli rescue services confirmed nine fatalities and 28 injuries in Beit Shemesh, raising Israel’s total casualty count to 10 since the conflict erupted.
“You have crossed our red line and must pay the price,” said Iran’s parliamentary speaker, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, in a televised address on Sunday.
The US military reported no US casualties and minimal infrastructure damage, despite what it described as “hundreds of Iranian missile and drone attacks”.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, has been killed along with senior figures in the country’s leadership in strikes on Saturday carried out by the US and Israel.
Early on Sunday, the Iranian state-run news agency IRNA confirmed 86-year-old Khamenei’s death. The supreme leader’s daughter, son-in-law, and grandson were also killed in the US and Israel’s coordinated attack on Iran.
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Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian said Khamenei’s killing is an “open declaration of war against Muslims”, particularly Shia practitioners.
“This tragic event is the greatest trial facing the Islamic world today,” Pezeshkian said in a written message offering condolences over the killing of the supreme leader, who has ruled Iran for over three decades.
The Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) also confirmed the killing of several other senior figures.
Here are some of them:
Ali Shamkhani
Shamkhani was the secretary of Iran’s Defence Council and a close adviser to Supreme Leader Khamenei.
The 70-year-old also oversaw the negotiations between the United States and Iran over the Iranian nuclear programme, the latest round of which concluded on Friday.
“If the main issue of the negotiations is not making nuclear weapons by Iran, this is in compliance with a religious decree issued by Iran’s leader and the country’s defence doctrine, and an immediate agreement is within reach,” Shamkhani had said on Thursday.
Shamkhani had also been targeted in an Israeli strike in June 2025, during the 12-day war between Iran and Israel. There were reports that he had been killed in the attack, but he was later confirmed to have survived. He was pulled from the rubble of his home, and had sustained severe injuries back then.
He had recently been appointed the secretary of Iran’s Defence Council, which was created after the war and coordinated Iran’s defence and national security policies, while mobilising resources to address threats.
He had also led Iran’s Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) for a decade until 2023, making him the second-longest-serving security chief since 1979 after former President Hassan Rouhani, who was SNSC secretary for nearly 16 years.
Ali Shamkhani, the former secretary of the Supreme National Security Council of Iran, attends a meeting in Tehran [File: Atta Kenare/AFP]
Abdolrahim Mousavi
Mousavi served as the chief of staff of Iran’s armed forces. He had been appointed to this post by Khamenei just days after Israel’s strikes on Iran in June last year.
He previously served as the commander-in-chief of the Iranian army from 2017 to 2025.
Mousavi is believed to have been a prominent figure working to develop Iran’s ballistic missiles, drone systems and Western-criticised space launches.
In March 2023, the US, together with the European Union, United Kingdom, and Australia, sanctioned Mousavi for committing serious human rights abuses in Iran.
“Iranian army personnel under Mousavi’s command reportedly fired machine guns at protesters in November 2019,” a report by the US Department of State said. In November 2019, protests had erupted across Iran after an abrupt decision by authorities to hike petrol prices as part of efforts to blunt the effects of crippling US sanctions on the country’s economy.
Major General Abdolrahim Mousavi addresses a crowd during a protest against the United States, Israel, and Saudi Arabia in Tehran, Iran [File: Fatemeh Bahrami/Anadolu Agency]
Aziz Nasirzadeh
Nasirzadeh served as Iran’s minister of defence in Pezeshkian’s government, which came to power after the 2024 elections.
He was previously the deputy chief of staff of the Iranian armed forces and also served as the commander in the Iranian air force from 2018 to 2021.
Amid US and Israeli strikes, Nasirzadeh played a key role in ensuring Iranian military and nuclear infrastructure was safeguarded.
In June 2025, when the US and Israel had threatened to strike Iran, Nasirzadeh warned that Iran would target US military bases in the region if the US attacked it first.
“If a conflict is imposed on us … all US bases are within our reach, and we will boldly target them in host countries,” Nasirzadeh had told reporters at the time.
After the June 2025 attacks, there were also reports that he had been killed, but local journalists later confirmed that he was alive and in good health.
Nasirzadeh was also critical of Israel’s actions in Gaza and the occupied West Bank. According to Iranian media, in October 2024, during Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza and attacks across Southern Lebanon, he warned: “Resistance will defeat Israel as it did in 2006.” He was referring to Israel’s 34-day armed conflict with Lebanon’s Hezbollah in 2006, when Israel could not completely dismantle Hezbollah’s influence in the region.
Iran’s Defence Minister, Brigadier General Aziz Nasirzadeh, looks on during a meeting with Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro at the Miraflores Palace in Caracas, Venezuela [File: Marcelo Garcia/Venezuelan Presidency/Handout via AFP]
Mohammad Pakpour
Pakpour served as the commander-in-chief of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) from June 2025 until his death.
Khamenei appointed Pakpour, a veteran commander who started and made his career within the elite force, to the post last year. He had previously led the IRGC’s armoured units and then a combat division during the war with Iraq in the 1980s.
Pakpour led the IRGC ground forces for 16 years before he was appointed commander-in-chief. He was also a deputy for operations at the IRGC and used to lead two major headquarters of the force.
Brigadier General Mohammad Pakpour attends a military parade in Tehran [File: AFP]
Who will replace these Iranian officials?
A three-person council – consisting of Iran’s President Pezeshkian, Supreme Court Chief Justice Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei and one of the jurists of the Guardian Council – will temporarily assume all leadership duties in the country, Iran’s state TV reported.
Alireza Arafi, a religious leader on the Guardian Council, has been appointed to Iran’s leadership council, the body tasked with fulfilling the supreme leader’s role until the Assembly of Experts elects a new leader.
Reporting from Tehran, Al Jazeera’s Maziar Motamedi said the IRGC and security chief Ali Larijani are also expected to play pivotal roles.
Key members of the OPEC+ oil cartel announced a greater-than-expected increase to production quotas on Sunday following US and Israeli strikes on Iran that triggered retaliation by Tehran across the Middle East.
READ ALSO: [UPDATED] Trump, Netanyahu Claim Iran’s Supreme Leader Khamenei Killed After Israel-US Attack In Tehran
The eight-strong V8 (Voluntary Eight) group in the alliance, which includes top oil producers Saudi Arabia and Russia — as well as several Gulf states bearing the brunt of Tehran’s missile strikes — said they had agreed a “production adjustment” of 206,000 barrels per day (bpd).
“This adjustment will be implemented in April,” they said in a statement.
The text did not mention the outbreak of the Iran conflict, instead citing “a steady global economic outlook and current healthy market fundamentals” as their reasons for the increase.
Before the weekend’s meeting, experts had forecast a more modest increase of 137,000 bpd.
However, Jorge Leon, an analyst at Rystad Energy, warned that the agreed-upon increase might not be large enough to prevent the Iran conflict from causing a spike in oil prices when trading opens on Monday.
Leon pointed to the possibility that Iran could target the Strait of Hormuz, a key waterway for nearly a quarter of the world’s seaborne oil supplies, in retaliation.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have contacted ships to announce that the Strait was closed.
On Sunday, Iranian state TV said an oil tanker in the strait was struck while attempting to “illegally” pass through and was sinking, showing footage of a burning tanker at sea.
“If oil cannot move through Hormuz, an extra 206,000 barrels per day does very little to ease the market,” Leon said, arguing that “logistics and transit risk matter more than production targets right now”.
The OPEC+ move “is unlikely to calm markets”, he said.
“Prices will respond to developments in the Gulf and the status of shipping flows, not to a relatively small increase in output,” Leon added.
‘Nightmare Scenario’
Besides Russia and Saudi Arabia, the V8 group within OPEC+ includes Kuwait, Oman, Iraq, and the United Arab Emirates, all of which were targeted by Iranian attacks for a second day on Sunday.
Algeria and Kazakhstan are also part of the group.
Another analyst, Stephen Innes, managing partner at SPI Asset Management, said that, with the fear of incoming missiles in the Strait of Hormuz, insurers cancelling contracts for vessels wanting to go through there, and jammed electronic signalling in the Gulf region, commercial shippers were scared.
They are “starting to act as if the route is compromised,” he said.
“A full closure for more than a few days is the nightmare scenario,” he said.
A blockage of the strait could mean oil prices leaping from around $72 before the war to $120 to $150 a barrel when trading starts on Monday, he said, based on industry estimates.
He and other analysts pointed to land pipelines Saudi Arabia and the UAE could use to get around shipping through the strait, but noted that would still leave a shortfall of some eight million to 10 million bpd on the market.
“Those are meaningful pressure valves, but they are not a replacement for the full seaborne flow,” Innes said.
While higher prices might seem a boon for OPEC+ countries, it in fact carries the risk of increasing competition from producers outside the cartel, such as the United States, Canada, and Brazil.
Kpler analyst Homayoun Falakshahi told AFP that the cartel might “prefer prices of $80 to 90, but around $70 per barrel is the ideal price level” to cut the incentive for more investment by those rival producers.
He added that Russian production has been on a downward trend since November, leaving analysts to think that it was at its maximum output.
Leon, of Rystad Energy, said the only OPEC+ members “who can really boost their production are Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and, to a lesser degree, Kuwait and Iraq”.
Explosions are being heard in Iran, Israel and across several Middle Eastern states after the United States and Israel began attacking Iran on Saturday.
Tehran has responded by launching waves of missiles and drones at Israel and towards several military bases in the Middle East where US forces operate.
Iran had previously warned that if it were attacked, it would respond by targeting US military facilities across the region, which it considers legitimate targets.
Which countries have been attacked?
Israel’s air force says it dropped more than 1,200 munitions across 24 of Iran’s 31 provinces over the past day in its joint attack with the US.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) says it has launched attacks on 27 bases in the Middle East where US troops are deployed as well as Israeli military facilities in Tel Aviv and other parts of Israel.
So far, Iran has launched strikes across eight countries in the region: Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
Most of these attacks have been intercepted.
US military presence in the Middle East
The US has operated military bases in the Middle East for decades.
According to the Council on Foreign Relations, the US operates a broad network of military sites, both permanent and temporary, across at least 19 locations in the region.
Of these, eight are permanent bases in Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
As of mid-2025, there are about 40,000 to 50,000 US soldiers in the Middle East stationed in both large, permanent bases and smaller forward sites.
The countries with the most US soldiers are Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, the UAE and Saudi Arabia. These installations serve as critical hubs for US air and naval operations, regional logistics, intelligence gathering and force projection.
(Al Jazeera)
How many people have been killed or injured?
Below are the confirmed casualties across the 10 countries that have been subject to attacks as of Sunday at 15:00 GMT.
Due to the rapidly evolving situation, all figures may change as more information becomes available.
(Al Jazeera)
Iran – killed: 201, injured: 747
As of Sunday morning, the Iranian Red Crescent Society and official state-linked media have reported preliminary casualty figures of 201 people killed and at least 747 injured as rescue operations continue.
Since then, explosions continue to be heard across Iran with Israel saying it has carried out a large aerial attack on the “heart of the capital”.
The deadliest single incident occurred in the city of Minab in southeastern Iran, where a strike on an elementary girls school reportedly killed at least 148 people and injured 95. The attack occurred on Saturday, and the death toll has been climbing since.
Israel – killed: 9, injured: 121
On Sunday afternoon, an Iranian ballistic missile strike on central Israel’s Beit Shemesh killed eight people and injured about 20. Rescue workers are still combing through the rubble.
Late on Saturday, one woman in the Tel Aviv area was confirmed killed after being struck by falling shrapnel.
At least 121 others have been reported injured, at least one seriously.
At least 40 buildings in Tel Aviv were damaged in Iranian strikes on Saturday, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported, citing the city government.
An explosion occurs in Tel Aviv on February 28, 2026, after Iran launched missiles into Israel [Gideon Markowicz/Reuters]
US soldiers – killed: 3, injured: 5
On Sunday evening, US Central Command said that three US soldiers had been killed in action and five seriously wounded by Iranian attacks.
“Several others sustained minor shrapnel injuries and concussions — and are in the process of being returned to duty. Major combat operations continue and our response effort is ongoing,” the US Central Command said in a statement.
Bahrain – killed: 0, injured: 4
Iranian missiles targeted the headquarters of the US Navy’s 5th Fleet in Bahrain’s Juffair area.
Bahrain’s Ministry of Interior also confirmed that the country’s international airport was targeted with a drone, “resulting in material damage without loss of life”.
On Saturday night, several residential buildings in the capital, Manama, were struck by Iranian drones.
Government hospitals said four people were receiving treatment for shrapnel-related injuries.
A building was damaged in the Seef commercial district of Manama, Bahrain, on March 1, 2026, in an Iranian drone attack [Hamad Mohammed/Reuters]
Iraq – killed: 2, injured: 5
The US and Israel also targeted the Jurf al-Sakher base, also known as Jurf al-Nasr, in southern Iraq, which houses the Popular Mobilisation Forces, made up of mostly Shia fighters, and the Iran-supported Iraqi paramilitary group Kataib Hezbollah.
Iraqi state media and sources within Kataib Hezbollah confirmed that two fighters were killed in the strikes and five were wounded.
In northern Iraq‘s semiautonomous Kurdish region, where the US is reported to still have troops, several powerful explosions were reported near the US consulate and international airport in Erbil.
Air defences intercepted the drone attacks on Saturday, according to reports.
A plume of smoke rises near Erbil International Airport in Erbil, Iraq, on March 1, 2026 [Shvan Harki/AFP]
Jordan – killed: 0, injured: 0
The Jordanian armed forces reported intercepting 49 drones and ballistic missiles that entered Jordanian airspace. While their fragments caused localised property damage, there have been no deaths or injuries within the kingdom.
Kuwait – killed: 1, injured: 32
Kuwait’s Ministry of Defence says Ali al-Salem Air Base came under attack by a number of ballistic missiles, all of which were intercepted by Kuwaiti air defence systems.
A drone targeted Kuwait International Airport on Saturday, resulting in minor injuries to a number of employees and limited damage to the passenger building.
On Sunday, Kuwait’s Ministry of Health said one person had been killed and 32 wounded.
Kuwait City in the aftermath of strikes by Israel and the US on Iran [Stephanie McGehee /Reuters]
Oman – killed: 0, injured: 5
On Sunday morning, the Oman News Agency, quoting a security source, said two drones had targeted the Duqm port, injuring one foreign worker.
Later, Oman’s Maritime Security Centre said a Palau-flagged oil tanker was attacked about 5 nautical miles (9km) off Oman’s Musandam governorate, injuring four people.
Qatar – killed: 0, injured: 16
As of Sunday morning, the Qatari Ministry of Interior confirmed that the number of injured was at 16 people. Most injuries were reported to be from falling shrapnel and debris with one person seriously hurt.
The Qatari Ministry of Defence confirmed that two ballistic missiles struck the Al Udeid military base, where US forces are stationed, while a drone targeted an early warning radar installation.
Qatari air defence systems, in coordination with regional partners, successfully intercepted about 65 missiles and 12 drones over Qatari airspace, it said.
The Qatar Civil Aviation Authority suspended all air navigation indefinitely. Qatar Airways grounded all flights and advised passengers that updates will be provided on Monday by 9am (06:00 GMT).
All schools have moved to remote learning, and public gatherings for Ramadan have been suspended until further notice to ensure public safety.
Saudi Arabia – killed: 0, injured: 0
The Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs confirmed that Iranian attacks targeted both the capital, Riyadh, and Eastern Province, home to major oil infrastructure and the King Abdulaziz Air Base.
The kingdom has officially reported no casualties as of Sunday afternoon.
United Arab Emirates – killed: 3, injured: 58
As of Sunday afternoon, at least three people in the UAE were confirmed killed and 58 others wounded.
A Pakistani national was killed and seven people were injured when debris from intercepted missiles and drones fell on a residential area near Zayed International Airport in Abu Dhabi.
The Ministry of Defence confirmed that another individual, identified as an Asian national, was killed by falling shrapnel in a residential district of the capital.
Additionally, four airport staff at Dubai International Airport sustained injuries, and four people were injured at Palm Jumeirah after a fire in a building caused by falling debris.
