Fled from leaderless country (3)
I believe the answer is:
ran
'fled' is the definition.
(I've seen this before)
'leaderless country' is the wordplay.
'leaderless' means to remove the first letter.
'country' becomes 'iran' (Iran is an example).
'iran' with its first letter taken off is 'RAN'.
'from' acts as a link.
(Other definitions for ran that I've seen before include "Was candidate" , "Operated; hurried" , "Hastened" , "Took to one's heels" , "Managed; operated" .)