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The killing of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in a United States-Israeli air campaign has sent shockwaves through the Middle East, decapitating the leadership of the “axis of resistance” at its most critical moment.

For decades, this network of groups allied with Iran was Tehran’s forward line of defence. But today, with its commander-in-chief dead and its logistical arteries cut, the alliance looks less like a unified war machine and more like a series of isolated islands.

Hassan Ahmadian, a professor at the University of Tehran, warned that the era of strategic patience is over and the Iranian government is now prepared to “burn everything” in response to the attacks.

While Tehran promised to retaliate against the US and Israel “with a force they have never experienced before”, the reaction from its key proxies in Lebanon, Yemen and Iraq revealed a deep hesitation driven by local existential threats that may outweigh their ideological loyalty to a fallen leader.

Hezbollah: Walking between raindrops

In Beirut, the response from Hezbollah, long considered the crown jewel among Iran’s regional allies, has been cautiously calibrated.

After Sunday’s announcement of Khamenei’s death, the group issued a statement condemning the attack as the “height of criminality”. However, Al Jazeera correspondent in Beirut Mazen Ibrahim noted that the language used was defensive, not offensive.

“If one dismantles the linguistic structure of the statement, the complexity of Hezbollah’s position becomes clear,” Ibrahim said. “The secretary-general spoke of ‘confronting aggression’, which refers to a defensive posture. … He did not explicitly threaten to attack Israel or launch revenge operations.”

This caution is rooted in a new strategic reality. Since the collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s government in Syria in late 2024, the “land bridge” that supplied Hezbollah has been severed. Ali Akbar Dareini, a Tehran-based researcher, noted that this loss “cut the ground link with Lebanon”, leaving the group physically isolated.

Now with top leaders of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) killed alongside Khamenei, Hezbollah appears paralysed – caught between a battered domestic front in Lebanon and a vacuum of orders from Tehran.

The Houthis: Solidarity meets survival

In Yemen, the Houthis face an even more volatile calculus.

In his first televised address after the strikes on Iran began on Saturday, the group’s leader, Abdel-Malik al-Houthi, declared his forces “fully prepared for any developments”. Yet his rhetoric notably emphasised that “Iran is strong” and “its response will be decisive,” a phrasing that analysts interpreted as an attempt to deflect the immediate burden of war away from the Houthis.

The Houthis are under immense pressure. While they have successfully disrupted Red Sea shipping and fired missiles at Tel Aviv, they now face a renewed threat at home.

The internationally recognised Yemeni government, having won a power struggle against southern separatists, has sensed a shift in momentum. Defence Minister Taher al-Aqili recently declared: “The index of operations is heading towards the capital, Sanaa,” which the Houthis control. The statement signalled a potential ground offensive to retake Houthi territory.

This places the Houthis in a bind. While Houthi negotiator Mohammed Abdulsalam recently met with Iranian official Ali Larijani in Muscat, Oman, to discuss “unity of the arenas”, the reality on the ground is different. Engaging in a war for Iran could leave the Houthis’ home front exposed to government forces backed by regional rivals.

“Expanding the circle of targeting will only result in expanding the circle of confrontation,” the Houthi-affiliated Supreme Political Council warned in a statement that threatened escalation but also implicitly acknowledged the high cost of a wider war.

Iraq: The internal time bomb

Perhaps nowhere is the dilemma more acute than in Iraq, where the lines between the state and the “resistance” are dangerously blurred.

Iran-aligned militias, many of which operate under the state-sanctioned Popular Mobilisation Forces, are now caught in a direct standoff with the US. Tensions have simmered since late 2024 when Ibrahim Al-Sumaidaie, an adviser to Iraq’s prime minister, revealed that Washington had threatened to dismantle these groups by force, a warning that led to his resignation under pressure from militia leaders.

Today, that threat looms larger than ever. Unlike Hezbollah or the Houthis, these groups are technically part of the Iraqi security apparatus. A retaliation from Iraqi soil would not just risk a militia war but also a direct conflict between the US and the Iraqi state.

With the IRGC commanders who once mediated these tensions now dead, the “restraining hand” is gone. Isolated militia leaders may now decide to strike US bases of their own accord, dragging Baghdad into a war the government has desperately tried to avoid.

Resistance without a head

Khamenei’s assassination has essentially shattered the command-and-control structure of the “axis of resistance”.

The network was built on three pillars: the ideological authority of the supreme leader, the logistical coordination of the IRGC and the geographic connection through Syria. Today, all three are broken.

“The most important damage to Iran’s security interests is the severing of the ground link,” Dareini said. With Khamenei gone, the “spiritual link” is also severed.

What remains is a fragmented landscape. In Lebanon, Hezbollah is too exhausted to open a northern front. In Yemen, the Houthis face a potential domestic offensive. In Iraq, militias risk collapsing the state they live in.

Doha, Qatar— When Iranian missiles slammed into Doha, Dubai and Manama over the weekend, they shattered more than glass and concrete – they also were a blow to the Gulf states’ carefully cultivated image as oases of stability, insulated from the crises and conflicts in the rest of the Middle East.

Now, countries in the region face what analysts describe as an impossible choice: strike back and risk being seen as fighting alongside Israel, or remain passive while their cities burn.

“For people and political leaders here, seeing Manama, Doha and Dubai bombed is as strange and unimaginable as seeing Charlotte, Seattle, or Miami bombed would be for Americans,” Monica Marks, a professor of Middle East politics at New York University Abu Dhabi, told Al Jazeera.

The attacks came as Iran retaliated against a massive joint US-Israeli assault that began on Saturday. The operation killed Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other senior military leaders, and struck military and government sites across Iran. A school was also hit, and at least 148 people were killed in that strike alone.

Tehran retaliated with missiles and drones targeting Israel and US military assets across the Gulf, killing at least three people in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), where at least 58 people had been injured as of Sunday evening. Either missiles — or debris after they were intercepted — hit landmark buildings and the airport in Dubai, high-rises in Manama, and Kuwait’s airport, with smoke also seen billowing from some neighbourhoods in Doha. Saudi Arabia said Iran also struck Riyadh and its eastern region. Qatar said 16 people had been injured on its soil, while five people were injured in Oman, 32 in Kuwait and four in Bahrain.

A war they tried to stop

The Gulf states did not want this confrontation. In the weeks leading up to the attack, Oman had been mediating indirect talks between Washington and Tehran, with Foreign Minister Badr Albusaidi declaring that peace was “within reach” after Iran agreed never to stockpile enriched uranium and to dramatically dilute its existing enriched uranium.

Still, hours later, the US and Israel launched missiles.

“GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council] states have seen this war coming in slow motion for weeks, if not months, and have exerted a huge amount of effort to stop it,” Marks said.

They knew, she added, that a cornered Iranian regime would “choose fratricide before suicide”, taking its Gulf neighbours hostage rather than accepting defeat.

Rob Geist Pinfold, a lecturer at King’s College London, agreed that the Gulf states had tried hard to prevent military action.

“The GCC states did not want this war. They tried to lobby against it,” he told Al Jazeera. Against that backdrop, he said, the prospect that they might join the war — and be seen as “working with the Israelis, is a huge challenge for their legitimacy”.

Yet remaining passive carries its own risks. Pinfold described the Gulf states’ predicament as a “conundrum”: doing nothing while Iran strikes repeatedly is just as damaging to their standing as entering the war.

“At the end of the day, these governments are responsive to popular opinion,” he said. “They want to be seen as protecting their people, protecting their territory and their sovereignty.”

Both analysts suggested the Gulf states may ultimately choose to act – but on their own terms.

Pinfold argued they are more likely to launch strikes themselves, possibly through a joint GCC effort like the Peninsula Shield Force (PSF), rather than simply opening their airspace for US and Israeli operations.

The PSF was a unified army created in 1984 by the GCC, which evolved into the Unified Military Command in 2013.

“They don’t want to be seen as working for Israel or working with Israel,” he said. “They want to be seen as leading, not just following.”

This would allow the Gulf states to “get in the driving seat” and demonstrate agency after weeks of being sidelined, Pinfold added.

“It’s been the US and Israel that started this war. It was Iran that escalated it. So now the Gulf states are in a position where they can show that they are not just passive – they’re not just the people being bombed.”

Nightmare scenarios

The immediate fear for Gulf leaders centres on their most vulnerable infrastructure. Marks identified what she called the “real nightmare scenario”: Strikes on power grids, water desalination plants and energy infrastructure.

“Without air conditioning and water desalination, the scorching hot and bone-dry Gulf countries are essentially uninhabitable,” she said.

“Without energy infrastructure, they’re unprofitable. Gulf states will take whatever steps they deem will least jeopardise those interests.”

Pinfold, however, argued that the deeper threat is not physical but reputational.

The lasting damage, he warned, would be to the Gulf states’ soft power – their brand as stable, predictable havens for investment and tourism in a turbulent region.

“These strikes do damage to that reputation,” he said.

A new era of state-on-state war?

Both analysts noted that the current crisis marks a dramatic shift in regional security dynamics. For years, the Gulf states focused their concerns on non-state actors such as the Houthis in Yemen or Hezbollah in Lebanon.

That calculus has now changed.

“What we’re seeing is a new paradigm in the Middle East, or a return to a very old paradigm, of state-on-state warfare,” Pinfold said.

“We’re not seeing as much grey zone warfare in terms of disinformation, proxy war, and whatnot. We’re actually seeing a new level of escalation.”

Marks observed that before the war broke out, Gulf states – including the UAE – had come to view Israel as a greater threat to regional stability than Iran, particularly after Israel’s strike on Hamas leaders in Qatar last September.

“That assessment looks very different today,” she said.

Iran’s opening salvo, she added, has been “broad and alarmingly scattershot” – and much worse could be yet to come.

For now, the Gulf states are rapidly recalibrating. Their next moves will depend on whether Iran offers what Marks called “a more rational escalatory ladder” – one that might allow them to stay on the sidelines, exactly where they want to be.