Debris of a NATO air defense system that intercepted a missile launched from Iran is seen in Dortyol, in southern Hatay province, Turkey, March 4, 2026, in this screengrab from video. Photo: Ihlas News Agency (IHA) via REUTERS

Turkey became the latest unexpected target in the widening war in the Middle East on Wednesday after it intercepted an Iranian missile, as Iran’s retaliation for joint US-Israeli strikes spreads across the region.

Tehran appears to be betting that hitting countries beyond Israel will ignite regional pressure on Washington to stop its military operation, but Arab and Israeli diplomats say the strategy is backfiring, with the Islamic Republic “creating more enemies.”

Turkey said NATO air defenses destroyed a ballistic missile fired from Iran that was detected over Iraq and Syria and heading toward Turkish airspace. Turkey, a majority Sunni country and a NATO member, shares a roughly 310-mile border with Iran. Two days earlier, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan called for “an end to the bloodbath,” describing the war, launched by joint US-Israeli strikes on Saturday, as “illegal.”

Since the strikes that killed Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other senior officials, the regime in Tehran has expanded its retaliatory missile and drone fire to hit a swath of American allies including Qatar, Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. 

Iran’s interim national security chief, Ali Larijani, said on Sunday that Iran was “not seeking to attack” regional states and was acting only in self-defense against American bases. But in the days since, Iranian strikes have hit civilian infrastructure including power facilities and hotels across the Gulf.

New figures released Wednesday by Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) show Iran has concentrated far more firepower on Gulf neighbors than on Israel in the war’s opening days. Over the first four days, INSS said Iran launched about 200 missiles and about 100 drones at Israel across 123 attack waves. Over the same period, it targeted the Gulf states with about 500 missiles and about 2,000 drones — 2.5 times more missiles and 20 times more drones than it fired at Israel. 

According to Michael Eisenstadt, a military analyst and former US Army officer at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, the attacks reflect Iran’s strategy of applying graduated pressure by “catalyzing opposition to the war” in the United States and other countries. Tehran hopes disruptions to oil infrastructure and higher energy prices will create pressure for a ceasefire. 

But nearly every expert called Iran’s Gulf assault a blunder, saying the strikes have caused widespread anger in the Arab world. Six GCC states and Jordan condemned Iran’s attacks as “indiscriminate and reckless” and reaffirmed each country’s right to self-defense. 

Jeremy Issacharoff, a former Israeli ambassador and arms expert, said the Iranian strategy was counterproductive, turning quasi-allies into adversaries. 

“Attacking countries like Qatar that were pretty much positively inclined towards them was a huge mistake,” he told The Algemeiner. “They’ve created more enemies.”

Issacharoff said that Tehran’s leaders frame the conflict through hostility toward Zionism and the existence of a Jewish state in what they see as part of the Islamic world, adding that their driving strategic goal is hegemony. “In the end, they were looking to be much more in control of the region, and of the Arab world as a whole,” he said.

But the region was already moving in the opposite direction of what Iran wants, he said. Years of Iranian-backed missile attacks on Israel by proxy groups like Hezbollah in Lebanon had already pushed several countries to develop what he described as a regional defense mechanism, with Arab states cooperating with Israel and the US under the radar. 

“It’s discreet, but it’s happening,” Issacharoff said, adding that the latest attacks could prompt the emerging coalition to expand cooperation even further, beyond the military arena into a broader framework for regional stability.

Former US Central Command (CENTCOM) communications director Joe Buccino took it a step further, telling Fox News that Iran’s move was a “stunning strategic miscalculation” that could “set the Gulf states on [a] path toward normalization with Israel.”

Abbas Dahouk, a retired US Army colonel who served as a senior military adviser for Middle Eastern Affairs at the US State Department, echoed Issacharoff’s view that years of quiet cooperation had already strengthened a regional coalition against Iran, but he tied the acceleration to a specific turning point: Israel’s inclusion in CENTCOM in 2021, which he said was a “transformative” inflection point that forced regional militaries that once avoided overt ties to “quietly mature counter-Iran plans over years of joint exercises and coordination.”

That groundwork is now showing up in the scale of coordination, Dahouk told The Jerusalem Post in comments published Tuesday, with “hundreds of aircraft” able to operate at once, refuel, strike concealed targets, and counter Iran’s drone and missile networks. He added that Iran’s retaliation has left Gulf states little room to stay on the sidelines. 

“The region must view the Iranian regime as a common threat alongside the United States and Israel,” he said. “At this moment, they have little alternative.”

Former US General Jack Keane also told Fox that the Islamic Republic’s strategy had “backfired.”

“The Gulf states are responding, they’re adequately defending themselves … they’re frustrated with the Iranians,” Keane said, adding that several GCC states were preparing for combat. 

Emirati analyst Mohammad Al Ali wrote in Gulf News that Iran’s only success in this war so far was in “uniting the region and much of the world against them, constructing a vast wall of isolation between [the] regime and the international community.”

“If Iran’s leaders have succeeded in any respect during this war, it is only in uniting the region and much of the world against them, constructing a vast wall of isolation between their regime and the international community,” he wrote.

Beyond the Arab world, Iran’s strikes have triggered outrage in Europe and led France, Greece, and Britan to deploy defensive military assets to the Mediterranean.

“Iran’s strategy is to sow chaos and set the region on fire,” European Union foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas told reporters on Wednesday, lambasting the Iranian regime for indiscriminately attacking its neighbors.

Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski expressed similar sentiments when asked about the Iranian ballistic missile headed into Turkish airspace.

Iran is broadening the war to countries that did not attack it … there is a well-known saying it’s worse than a crime, it’s a mistake,” he said.

Mojtaba Khamenei, the second son of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, visits Hezbollah’s office in Tehran, Iran, Oct. 1, 2024. Photo: Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader/WANA (West Asia News Agency)/Handout via REUTERS

The powerful son of Iran’s slain supreme leader emerged on Wednesday as a frontrunner to succeed him as the US stepped up its military campaign against Tehran.

As new explosions rang out in Tehran, plans were in doubt for a funeral for Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, 86, killed by Israeli forces on Saturday in the first assassination of a nation’s top ruler by an airstrike.

The body had been expected to lie in state in a vast Tehran mosque from Wednesday evening, but state media reported a farewell ceremony had been postponed.

Two Iranian sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters that Mojtaba Khamenei, son of Iran’s slain supreme leader, was not in Tehran when his father was killed in a strike that destroyed the leader‘s compound.

Iran said the Assembly of Experts that will select the new leader would announce its decision soon, only the second time it will have done so since the Islamic Republic’s founding in 1979.

Assembly member Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami told state TV the candidates had already been identified but did not name them.

Israel said it would hunt down whoever was chosen.

Other candidates for supreme leader include Hassan Khomeini, grandson of the Islamic Republic’s founder and a champion of the reformist faction sidelined in recent decades.

But the favorite appears to be Mojtaba Khamenei, who has amassed power as a senior figure in the security forces and the vast business empire they control, the Iranian sources said. Choosing him would send a signal that hardliners were still firmly in charge.

Some Iranians have openly celebrated the death of the supreme leader, whose security forces killed thousands of anti-government demonstrators only weeks ago in the biggest domestic unrest since the era of the revolution.

But Iranians angry with the government said there was unlikely to be much sign of protest while bombs are falling.

“We have nowhere to go to protect ourselves from strikes, how can we protest?” Farah, 45, said by phone from Tehran, adding that the security forces “are everywhere. They will kill us. I hate this regime, but first I have to think about the safety of my two children.”

Meanwhile, in a sign of the US military’s reach, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said a US submarine had sunk an Iranian warship off the southern coast of Sri Lanka. At least 80 people were killed, Sri Lanka’s deputy foreign minister told local television.

The United States and Israel pressed on with their round-the-clock assaults on Iran that began on Saturday. The top US commander said the campaign was “ahead of the game plan” and Hegseth said the US was winning the conflict.

“This was never meant to be a fair fight, and it is not a fair fight. We are punching them while they’re down,” Hegseth told a briefing. “Our air ​defenses and ​that of our allies ‌have ⁠plenty of runway. We can sustain this fight ​easily ​for ⁠as long as we ​need to.”

A New York Times report said that Iranian intelligence had reached out to the CIA early in the war about a path toward ending the conflict.

The report said that officials in Washington were skeptical of an “off-ramp” for now, while Trump said on Tuesday that Iranians wanted talks but it was “too late.”