From London: As Australians slept on Saturday night, a military operation of extraordinary ambition was playing out over the skies of Tehran. Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, 86, was killed in a joint American-Israeli operation targeting Iran, with Iranian state media ultimately confirming the death. The killing marks the single most significant act of targeted military force against a head of state in decades, and its consequences are already reverberating from the Persian Gulf to the streets of Sydney.
The massive joint military offensive, called "Operation Epic Fury," targeted Islamic Republic regime leadership and military installations described as posing an "imminent threat." Khamenei was killed while at his office; Iranian state media reported that "the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution of Iran was martyred at his workplace in the Beit Rahbari," his Tehran compound. Satellite imagery circulating after the strikes showed the compound in near-total ruin.
Israel's military said that top Iranian security officials were among those killed, including the country's defence minister, the commander of the Revolutionary Guard Corps, and the secretary of the Iranian Security Council. The US and Israel targeted nuclear facilities, ballistic missile infrastructure and radar installations, alongside specific strikes on leadership compounds and elements of Iran's military command structure. President Donald Trump announced the operation publicly, declaring that the strikes would continue until peace was secured.
For Canberra, the implications were immediate. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese convened Australia's national security committee on Sunday morning and issued an unambiguous statement of support for the operation. "We support the United States acting to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and to prevent Iran continuing to threaten international peace and security," the Prime Minister said. The statement followed Iran's ambassador being expelled from Australia in August 2025 after the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation found Tehran was behind at least two anti-Semitic arson attacks on home soil, including the firebombing of the Adass Israel Synagogue in Melbourne.
Albanese had earlier said that "for decades, the Iranian regime has been a destabilising force, through its ballistic missile and nuclear programs, support for armed proxies and brutal acts of violence and intimidation." "A regime that relies on the repression and murder of its own people to retain power is without legitimacy," he added. Opposition Leader Angus Taylor struck a similar tone, describing the regime as "authoritarian, anti-Semitic and abhorrent" and noting that "since 1979, the revolutionary Islamic government in Tehran has oppressed, imprisoned and murdered Iranians."
Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade advised Australians not to travel to countries in the region, including Iran, Qatar, Iraq, Yemen, Syria, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Kuwait. Foreign Minister Penny Wong said airspace closures caused by Iranian retaliatory strikes were likely to limit the federal government's ability to organise repatriation flights for Australians stranded in the Middle East. Wong also confirmed that Australia had no part in the coordinated strikes.
The scale of the retaliatory strikes from Tehran has compounded the crisis for travellers. Emirates, the world's largest international airline, suspended all flight operations to and from Dubai, and Qatar Airways followed suit, suspending all flights to and from Doha, with flights from Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth all forced to return to Australia. The closure of key hub airports in Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Doha resulted in the cancellation of more than 1,800 flights by major Middle Eastern airlines.
A Region in Flames
CNN teams reported blasts in several capitals and major cities, including Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Doha and Bahrain's Manama. Iran declared 40 days of mourning and launched attacks after the supreme leader's killing. Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian described revenge as his country's "legitimate right and duty." The United Nations Security Council held an emergency session at which Secretary-General António Guterres warned that "everything must be done to prevent a further escalation," cautioning that "the alternative is a potential wider conflict with grave consequences for civilians and regional stability."
Inside Iran, the reaction was complex. As news of Khamenei's death broke, Iranians began pouring into the streets in an expression of "joy, shock and disbelief," though security forces were deployed to prevent an uprising alongside a renewed internet blackout. Videos of people celebrating in Karaj, Qazvin, Shiraz, Kermanshah, Isfahan and Sanandaj were circulated despite the blackout. Footage also showed security forces opening fire on celebrants in the streets.
The Economic Fault Line
For Australia and its trading partners in Asia, the most immediate economic anxiety centres on the Strait of Hormuz. An official with the European Union's naval mission told Reuters that vessels crossing the strait had been receiving transmissions from Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps saying "no ship is allowed to pass the Strait of Hormuz." According to the US Energy Information Administration, about 20 million barrels of oil, worth approximately $500 billion in annual global energy trade, transited through the Strait of Hormuz each day in 2024. As a result of the closure threats, 150 freight ships, including many oil tankers, have already stalled behind the strait.
Energy analyst Saul Kavonic of MST Marquee warned that a successful closure "could present a scenario three times the severity of the Arab oil embargo and Iranian revolution in the 1970s, and drive oil prices into the triple digits, while LNG prices retest the record highs of 2022." The EIA estimated that 84 per cent of crude oil transiting the strait is destined for Asian markets, and a similar pattern holds for LNG, with 83 per cent of volumes heading to Asian destinations. For Australia's largest trading partners, particularly China, Japan and South Korea, a sustained disruption would be deeply destabilising.
The Strategic Debate
The moral and strategic legitimacy of the operation is already drawing sharp international lines. China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi called the US-Israeli attack "unacceptable" and condemned the "blatant killing of a sovereign leader and the incitement of regime change," warning that "the situation in the Middle East may be pushed into a dangerous abyss." Russian President Vladimir Putin called the targeted killing of Iran's supreme leader a "cynical murder," according to Russian state media agency TASS.
Those opposing the strikes raise serious questions that deserve honest engagement. Iran was, as recently as weeks before the assault, engaged in indirect nuclear negotiations mediated by Oman, and a second round of nuclear talks had been scheduled to be held in Geneva. Critics argue that targeting a head of state mid-diplomacy risks setting a precedent that undermines every future negotiation, and that the civilian casualties already being reported add a profound moral weight to the decision. Iran says one attack killed over 100 girls at an elementary school near a military base.
Analysts at Chatham House drew a pointed historical comparison: "The parallel with the 2003 Iraq war is difficult to ignore. That war demonstrated that collapsing or attempting to collapse a regime is far easier than shaping what follows." Even if parts of Iran's leadership and command structure are degraded, the Islamic Republic has experience regenerating under pressure. External military pressure may weaken a regime, but it does not automatically build a viable alternative.
There are, however, legitimate grounds for the position Australia and its allies have taken. Khamenei's Iran had supplied weapons to Hamas and Hezbollah, bankrolled attacks on Australian soil, and pursued a nuclear programme that successive diplomatic efforts failed to durably constrain. The argument that strategic patience had exhausted itself is not frivolous, even if the risks of what comes next remain very real.
What is clear, as the smoke continues to rise over Tehran, is that the world has entered a period of profound uncertainty. The succession question inside Iran is unresolved. The Strait of Hormuz remains contested. And the prospect of a broader regional war, drawing in Gulf states and the wider Muslim world, is no longer a remote scenario. For Canberra, whose economic lifelines run through Asia and whose citizens are stranded across the Middle East, this is not a distant crisis. It is one that will demand careful, evidence-based statecraft in the days ahead, whatever one's view of how Saturday's strikes came to pass.