{"id":509508,"date":"2026-03-02T13:36:19","date_gmt":"2026-03-02T13:36:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/509508\/"},"modified":"2026-03-02T13:36:19","modified_gmt":"2026-03-02T13:36:19","slug":"as-u-s-and-israel-trade-blows-with-iran-whats-next-national","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/509508\/","title":{"rendered":"As U.S. and Israel trade blows with Iran, what\u2019s next? – National"},"content":{"rendered":"

The U.S. and Israel continue to bombard Iran<\/a> following the death of its supreme leader. At the same time, Iran is firing its own missiles at surrounding Gulf States and parts of the Middle East in retaliation.<\/p>\n

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With both sides vowing to continue, people are questioning whether a wider regional conflict is possible and what could be next for Iran since Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed in Saturday\u2019s attacks.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you don\u2019t put boots on the ground, who does (U.S. President) Donald Trump<\/a> think the Iranian Revolutionary Guard is going to hand its weapons to,\u201d wondered Jon Allen, a senior fellow at the Bill Graham Centre for Contemporary International History at the University of Toronto. \u201cRegime change? Up in the air.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Sunday, Trump called on Iran\u2019s Revolutionary Guard and military police to lay down their arms or face death.<\/p>\n

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Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said in a prerecorded message that a new leadership council had already begun its work. The country\u2019s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said a new supreme leader would be chosen in \u201cone or two days.\u201d<\/p>\n

With its leader gone, experts say, the regime will aim to portray a sense of \u201cstability and continuity,\u201d but behind the scenes there is likely instability.<\/p>\n

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\u201c(The regime is) going to do its best to retaliate to the degree it can, in order to do two things,\u201d said Ross Harrison, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute in Washington, D.C. \u201cOne is to show that the regime can inflict damage on its adversaries, and number two, to show that the region is still in control.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s really a fight for survival of the regime and for inflicting as much damage as the regime can in order to change the calculus of its adversaries.\u201d<\/p>\n

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He told Global News there will be \u201cmore of the same\u201d in the coming days, and that Iran will likely accelerate its attacks on Israel, hoping to cause the most damage from missiles that make it through that country\u2019s \u201cIron Dome\u201d defences. He added that the majority of the attacks will likely be against U.S. bases and assets in the region, as well as Israel.<\/p>\n

Protesters in the country, however, remain defiant with many having celebrated Khamenei\u2019s death on Saturday.<\/p>\n

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An end to the regime is difficult to determine, but Burcu Ozcelik with the Royal United Services Institute said there is at least one possible goal.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe goal of trying to create the conditions on the ground inside Iran whereby an alternative form of government might emerge at least for the transition period until Iran achieves some level of stabilization.\u201d<\/p>\n

The U.S. and Israel have indicted there will be no slow down in their efforts, with Israel on Sunday saying there would be a \u201cnon-stop air train\u201d of strikes against Iranian military and leadership targets.<\/p>\n

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Trump has also said heavy bombing will continue \u201cuninterrupted throughout the week or, as long as necessary.\u201d<\/p>\n

Israel\u2019s ambassador to Canada, Iddo Moed, told Global News the goal of the operation was to remove \u201cexistential threats\u201d from Iran. But he added help could be provided to Iranians to assist in a regime change.<\/p>\n

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\u201cI think that we can talk about lines that support the Iranians with means, perhaps, to create a regime change,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s for the Iranian people, and this is also the message that was very clearly said by Prime Minister (Benjamin) Netanyahu the other day, that we want to see a peaceful Iran living side-by-side with the rest of the region.\u201d<\/p>\n

The U.S.-Israel operation is something to watch, said Nejar Mojtahedi, an Iranian-Canadian journalist. She said she expects the operation to unfold in stages.<\/p>\n

\u201cNumber one, decapitate the leadership of the regime,\u201d she told Global News. \u201cNumber two is to degrade the military defence capability of the regime so they can\u2019t retaliate as strong as they would like to.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mojtahedi said stage three would see an effort to degrade Iran\u2019s economy, and the fourth would be to allow the Iranian people to take over the country.<\/p>\n

In his initial announcement about the campaign by the U.S. and Israel, Trump called for Iranians to rise up and \u201ctake over\u201d their government.<\/p>\n

He reiterated that call on Sunday on Truth Social.<\/p>\n

\u201cI call upon all the radiant patriots who yearn for freedom to seize this moment to be brave, be bold, be heroic, and take back your country,\u201d Trump said. \u201cAmerica is with you. I made a promise to you, and I fulfilled that promise. The rest will be up to you, but we\u2019ll be there to help.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Trump did not elaborate on how the U.S. would help.<\/p>\n

\u2014with files from Global News\u2019 Jeff Semple, Jen Palma and Jazan Grewal-Pabla<\/p>\n

\n\t\t&copy 2026 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The U.S. and Israel continue to bombard Iran following the death of its supreme leader. At the same…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":509509,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1376,43,5897,202724,44,41,39,42,40,3275],"class_list":{"0":"post-509508","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-donald-trump","9":"tag-headlines","10":"tag-iran","11":"tag-iran-strikes","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-top-news","14":"tag-top-stories","15":"tag-topnews","16":"tag-topstories","17":"tag-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/509508","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=509508"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/509508\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/509509"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=509508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=509508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=509508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}