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The United States-Israeli war on Iran is just one day old, and it is already clear it will have a profound impact on the Middle East and the Gulf in particular. The US-Israeli bombardment of Iran has killed a number of high-ranking officials as well as Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Tehran has responded by attacking not just Israel but also various countries in the region.

Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Kuwait and Oman were all struck by Iranian missiles or drones, even though none of these countries had launched attacks on Iran from their territory. Various sites across these states were targeted, including US military bases, airports, ports and even commercial areas.

If the conflict drags on, it could become a real turning point for the Gulf – one that reshapes how states think about security, alliances and even their long-term economic futures.

For years, Gulf stability has leaned on a familiar set of assumptions: The United States remained the dominant security guarantor; rivalry with Iran was managed, contained and kept below the threshold of full confrontation; and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) – despite its disagreements – provided enough coordination to prevent regional politics from unravelling entirely. A sustained conflict involving the US, Israel and Iran would strain all of that at once. It would push Gulf capitals to revisit not only their defence planning but also the deeper logic of their regional strategy.

In recent years, Gulf diplomacy had already been shifting – carefully, quietly and with a strong preference for hedging rather than choosing sides. The Saudi-Iran thaw brokered by China in 2023, the UAE’s pragmatic channels with Tehran and Oman’s steady mediation role all point to the same idea: Stability requires dialogue, even when mistrust runs deep. Qatar has also kept doors open, betting on diplomacy and de-escalation as a way to reduce risk.

But a prolonged war would make that balancing act much harder to sustain. Pressure would rise from Washington to show clearer alignment. Domestic opinion would demand firmer answers about where national interests truly stand. Regional polarisation would intensify. In that kind of environment, strategic ambiguity stops looking like smart flexibility and starts looking like vulnerability because everyone wants you to pick a side.

The economic shockwaves could be just as significant. Any extended conflict tied to Iran immediately puts maritime chokepoints back at the centre of global attention, especially the Strait of Hormuz, one of the most sensitive arteries in the world economy. Even limited disruptions could trigger sharp energy price increases, higher insurance and shipping costs, and renewed investor anxiety.

Yes, higher oil prices could boost revenues in the short term, but sustained volatility carries a different cost. It could scare away long-term capital, complicate megaproject financing and raise borrowing costs at exactly the moment many Gulf states are trying to accelerate diversification.

There is also a longer-term strategic risk. Major consumers, especially in Asia, may decide that repeated instability is reason enough to speed up diversification away from Gulf energy resources. Over time, that would quietly reduce the region’s leverage, even if it remains a major energy supplier.

Inside the GCC, the war could either push states closer together or expose the cracks. The bloc has always moved between unity and rivalry, and a crisis doesn’t automatically produce cohesion. Different members have different threat perceptions and different comfort levels with risk. Oman and Qatar have typically valued mediation and communication channels with Tehran. Saudi Arabia and the UAE have leaned more heavily towards deterrence, even if both have recently invested in de-escalation. Kuwait tends to balance carefully and avoid hard positioning.

If the conflict escalates unpredictably, those differences could resurface and strain coordination. But the opposite outcome is also possible. The crisis could drive deeper cooperation on missile defence, intelligence sharing and maritime security. Which direction the GCC takes will depend less on outside pressure and more on whether member states see this as a moment to compete or a moment to close ranks.

Zooming out, a prolonged war would also accelerate larger geopolitical realignments. China and Russia would not remain passive. Beijing, deeply invested in Gulf energy flows and regional connectivity, may expand its diplomatic footprint and present itself as a stabilising intermediary. Moscow could exploit the turmoil to increase arms sales and leverage regional divisions.

Meanwhile, if US military engagement deepens but Washington’s political bandwidth narrows, Gulf states may find themselves in a complicated position – more dependent on American security support yet more cautious about relying on a single patron. That dynamic could produce a new pattern, something like conditional alignment, where Gulf capitals cooperate militarily with the US but widen their economic and diplomatic options to avoid overdependence.

The deepest change, though, may not be military or economic. It may be cultural, in strategic terms. The Gulf states have spent decades prioritising stability, modernisation and careful geopolitical manoeuvring. A sustained regional war could disrupt that model. It could force painful trade-offs between security imperatives and development ambitions, between diplomatic flexibility and alliance discipline, between the desire to avoid escalation and the reality of living next door to it.

That is why the Gulf now feels like it is standing at a crossroads. It could become the front line of a prolonged, great power-inflected confrontation – or it could leverage the diplomatic capital it has built to push for de-escalation while strengthening its defensive resilience. Either way, the outcome won’t just shape Gulf security thinking. It could influence the region’s entire political architecture for years – possibly decades – to come.

The assassination of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in joint US-Israeli air attacks has caused one of the most significant blows to the country’s leadership since the 1979 Islamic revolution, triggering protests by his supporters.

Khamenei assumed Iran’s supreme leadership in 1989 after the death of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who had led the Islamic revolution against the pro-United States Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.

On Sunday, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said seeking revenge for the killing of Khamenei and other senior Iranian officials is the country’s “duty and legitimate right”.

President Donald Trump has framed the operation as a “liberation” moment, predicting that the removal of the “head” will lead to the swift collapse of the body. However, in Iran, the reality suggests a far more complex situation.

Interviews with insiders, military experts and political sociologists suggest that the decapitation of Iran’s top leadership may not go the way the West envisions. Instead, it risks birthing a “garrison state” – a paranoid, militarised system fighting for its existence with no political red lines left to cross.

The limits of ‘decapitation’

The central premise of the US operation is that Iran is too brittle to survive the death of its supreme leader. In a phone interview with CBS News, Trump claimed he “knows exactly” who is calling the shots in Tehran, adding that “there are some good candidates” to replace the supreme leader. He did not elaborate on his claims.

However, military analysts warn against the assumption that air strikes alone can trigger “regime change”. Michael Mulroy, a former US deputy assistant secretary of defence, told Al Jazeera Arabic that without “boots on the ground” or a fully armed organic uprising, the state’s deep security apparatus can survive simply by maintaining cohesion.

“You cannot facilitate regime change through air strikes alone,” Mulroy said. “If anyone is left alive to speak, the regime is still there.”

This resilience is rooted in Iran’s dual military structure. The government is protected not just by a regular army (Artesh), but also by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) – a powerful parallel military force constitutionally tasked with protecting the velayat-e faqih system – the principle of the guardianship of the Islamic jurist.

Supporting them is the Basij, a vast paramilitary volunteer militia embedded in every neighbourhood, specifically trained to crush internal dissent and mobilise ideological loyalists.

That cohesion is already being tested.

Hossein Royvaran, a political analyst based in Tehran, confirmed that the strikes wiped out the country’s top security tier, including Khamenei’s adviser and secretary of the newly-formed Supreme Defence Council, Ali Shamkhani.

The secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, Ali Larijani, said the leadership transition will begin on Sunday.

“An interim leadership council will soon be formed. The president, the head of the judiciary and a jurist from the Guardian Council will assume responsibility until the election of the next leader,” said Larijani.

“This council will be established as soon as possible. We are working to form it as early as today,” he said in an interview broadcast by state TV.

The rapid formation of an interim leadership council – comprising the president, judiciary chief, and a Guardian Council religious leader – indicates that the system’s “survival protocols” have been activated.

According to Royvaran, the system is designed to be “institutional, not personal”, capable of functioning on “autopilot” even when the political leadership is severed.

But a Tehran-based analyst said direction of Iran is still unclear as officials try to ‘project stability’.

“Officials here are trying to project stability, emphasising that the situation is under control and that state institutions are functioning effectively,” Abas Aslani, senior research fellow at the Center for Middle East Strategic Studies, said.

“Today, [the US-Israeli] air strikes targeted security and military infrastructure in the capital [Tehran] and other cities. There are expectations that such strikes could continue – and possibly intensify – in the coming hours or days,” he told Al Jazeera.

“That prospect of escalation is not something many ordinary Iranians welcome. At the same time, Iranian officials are issuing strong warnings, suggesting they could respond with capabilities that have not previously been used against Israel or the United States.”

From theocracy to nationalist survival

Perhaps the most significant shift in the immediate aftermath is Iran’s pivot from religious legitimacy to survivalist nationalism.

Aware that the death of the supreme leader might sever the spiritual bond with parts of the population, surviving officials are reframing the war not as a defence of the clergy, but as a defence of Iran’s territorial integrity.

Larijani, a conservative heavyweight and key figure in the transition, issued a stark warning that Israel’s ultimate goal is the “partition” of Iran. By raising the spectre of Iran being broken into ethnic statelets, the leadership aims to rally secular Iranians and the opposition against a common external enemy.

This strategy complicates the US hope for a popular uprising.

Saleh al-Mutairi, a political sociologist, notes that the government’s declaration of 40 days of mourning creates a “funeral trap” for the opposition. The streets will likely be filled with millions of mourners, creating a human shield for the government and making it logistically and morally difficult for antigovernment protests to gain momentum in the short term.

The end of ‘strategic patience’

If Iran survives the initial shock, the nation that emerges will likely be fundamentally different: less calculated and probably more violent.

For years, Khamenei championed a doctrine of “strategic patience”, often absorbing blows to avoid all-out war.

Hassan Ahmadian, a professor at the University of Tehran, says the era died with the supreme leader.

“Iran learned a hard lesson from the June 2025 war: Restraint is interpreted as weakness,” Ahmadian told Al Jazeera Arabic. The new calculus in Tehran is likely to be a “scorched earth” policy.

“The decision has been made. If attacked, Iran will burn everything,” Ahmadian added, suggesting that the response will be broader and more painful than anything seen in previous escalations.”

This risks a scenario where field commanders, freed from the political caution of the clerical leadership, lash out with greater ferocity. The assassination has humiliated the security establishment, exposing what Liqaa Maki, a senior researcher at Al Jazeera Centre for Studies, calls a catastrophic intelligence failure.

“The believer is not bitten from the same hole twice, yet Iran has been bitten twice,” Maki said, referring to the pattern of US strikes. This “total exposure” is likely to drive the surviving leadership underground, turning Iran into a hyper-security state that views any internal dissent as foreign collaboration, he said.