In a recent interview, Faran Tahir (Iron Man, Star Trek) talked a bit about the possibility of returning to the IRON MAN franchise and the bridge from Iron Man 3 to The Avengers.

When asked about returning in part 3 of Iron Man and assuming the role of The Mandarin, Tahir said;

Jon Favreau and [the producers] are not stupid. They’re also listening in on all of this and wanting to get the pulse of where the audience is. But at some point, they want to introduce Mandarin into the storyline and my character, like Mandarin, was the leader of the Ten Rings. We’re leaving it open because, partly, it makes good business sense for us to leave a little bit of uncertainty for people to speculate on.

When asked if Jon Favreau was even thinking about part 3, or if he was squarely focused on part 2, Tahir said;

He has known for a long time where he wants to take it and I don’t want to speak for him, but my feeling is that the second movie didn’t want to just follow a singular storyline. They wanted to expand the characters to show that it’s not a linear saga like ‘Lord of the Rings.’ There’s a linkage somewhere in there, but the big idea is to do at least one more ‘Iron Man’ movie and then go into ‘The Avengers.’