Iran’s 86-year-old supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has been hiding in a secure bunker since Israel began its bombing campaign this month, and there are signs that a top clerical body appointed by the ayatollah has accelerated its work toward identifying his successor.

Reuters reports that two front-runners have emerged: Mr. Khamenei’s 56-year-old son Mojtaba and Hassan Khomeini, the grandson of the Islamic Republic’s late founder Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Prior to the current conflict, there were rumors that former Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi was a leading candidate to become Iran’s next supreme leader, but he was killed in a helicopter crash last year.

Behnam Ben Taleblu, senior director of the Iran Program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, tells Threat Status that “Khamenei is looking to have his son or someone from the hard-line security establishment take over.” The supreme leader, Mr. Taleblu said, has “probably found some old guy who could play an interim or bridging role in the situation should he die.”

The fragile Israel-Iran-U.S. ceasefire held through Tuesday morning, but the threat of a prolonged war is causing particular unease in Beijing, where Chinese officials are wary that Iran could still try to close the Strait of Hormuz. Some 45% of China’s oil passes through the strait on tankers and a halt would further weaken China’s struggling economy, according to analysts.

A key aspect of the Trump administration’s strategy in recent days has been to publicly pressure China, the world’s top buyer of Iranian oil, to intercede and convince Iranian leaders not to shutter the strategic waterway. The strait is a choke point located between the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman. In 2024, the waterway saw an average daily flow of about 20 million barrels of oil a day, or about 20% of global petroleum consumption.

Chinese officials issued cautious statements on the issue Monday. “The Persian Gulf and nearby waters are important routes for international trade in goods and energy,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Guo Jiankun told reporters in Beijing. “Keeping the region safe and stable serves the common interests of the international community.”

Mr. Zelenskyy said he expects to hold talks with Mr. Trump during the NATO summit that opens in the Netherlands on Tuesday — a high-stakes development that comes as Russia increases its missile and drone attacks on Ukraine ahead of an anticipated third round of direct peace talks.

In an interview with the Kyiv Independent, Mr. Zelenskyy expressed concerns over the U.S. position on Russian aggression, adding that Kyiv and Washington should be strong allies against Moscow. “It is a complicated question because I truly do not know what relationship Trump has with Putin,” the Ukrainian president said, referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin. “They may be short-term partners, but they will never be friends.”

It remains to be seen how the Ukraine war will be impacted by the U.S. bombing of Iranian nuclear sites. Russia has condemned the strikes and expressed support for Iran, whose foreign minister met with Mr. Putin in Moscow on Monday. The Iran-Russia alliance hangs in the backdrop of the NATO summit.

NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte said ahead of the summit that he expects NATO members, except for Spain, to approve raising benchmark defense spending to 5% of GDP. He added that the summit will focus on continued support for Ukraine and the “pursuit of a just and lasting end to Russia’s war of aggression.”

An act of war is a “tough decision for any president, but when the world is already at war with Islamist terrorism, there can be no compromise,” Washington Times columnist Cal Thomas writes. “Failure to have attacked [Iran’s] nuclear sites would have put Israel at risk of destruction and the U.S. in greater peril.

“The U.S. has effectively been at war with Iran since 1979, when ‘Iranian students’ seized the embassy in Tehran and held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days before releasing them, apparently fearing what incoming President Ronald Reagan might do. Mr. Trump turned that fear into a reality,” Mr. Thomas writes.

“Mr. Trump’s bold decision to end the talking and act against an evil menace could change the entire dynamic of the Middle East. Others have tried and failed,” he writes. “Mr. Trump may have just succeeded.”

The long-held notion that Chinese fighter jets are inferior to their Western counterparts was “rudely punctured last month during a massive aerial dogfight between India and Pakistan,” according to James H. Anderson, who notes that “the contest pitted the French-built Rafale fighters against Chinese-made platforms, including the J-10C Vigorous Dragon.”

“The mini proxy war between Chinese and Western-made platforms has far-reaching implications. For starters, the performance of Chinese-made jets will likely boost China’s arms exports at the expense of Europe’s defense industry,” writes Mr. Anderson, who served as deputy undersecretary of defense for policy during the first Trump administration.

“China’s inability to produce reliable jet engines was once the bane of its aerospace sector,” he writes. “Early versions of China’s J-10 had to incorporate more reliable Russian-built engines. Not anymore. J-10C variants now come equipped with high-performing Chinese-manufactured engines.”

• June 24 — The Need for Speed: Transforming Defense Procurement for a Dangerous World, Hudson Institute

• June 25 — The New IC, Intelligence and National Security Alliance

• June 25 — Algorithms and Authoritarians Hearing, House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party

• June 25 — How AI is Uncovering and Rebuilding the Architecture of the Mind, OpenAI

• June 26 — The Realities of an Invasion of Taiwan, Stimson Center

• July 15-18 — Aspen Security Forum, Aspen Institute