Fight for survival

Chaos suggests Iran's regime is barely functioning amid destruction

- Patrick Wintour Diplomatic editor

Iran endured a day of unprecedented military and diplomatic pressure yesterday as US airstrikes pushed the death toll in the country above 800 and the offices of the assembly of experts, the body due to select a replacement for the assassinated supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, were bombed.

It would be an extraordinary security lapse if it emerges many of the 88 elderly clerics on the assembly had been in the building in Qom at the time. "There was another hit today on the new leadership, and it looks like that was pretty substantial," Donald Trump said at the White House, although it was unclear what specifically he was talking about. In Tehran, a building that is home to a body that mediates between Iran's parliament and the guardian council of clerics and lawyers was also attacked.

In an effort to instil some stability, it had become imperative for Iran's authorities to try rapidly to install a new clerical figure to replace the 86-year-old Khamenei. He was assassinated along with his wife and granddaughter on Sunday.

Reports that the defence minister, installed only two days earlier, had been killed were not confirmed. The offices of the national security council had been bombed. It was not known if Ali Larijani, the council's secretary, was present. The chaos suggested Iran's government was struggling to function at all in the middle of a war that was turning into an existential struggle for survival.