Iran announces new supreme leader as US-Israel strike key infrastructure

Jerusalem/Dubai: Iranian state TV says Mojtaba Khamenei, the son of the late supreme leader who was killed on the first day of the war, has been named his successor.

“The name of Khamenei will continue”, said Ayatollah Hosseinali Eshkevari, a member of the clerical council charged with electing a new leader, in a video published earlier by the Iranian media.

The younger Khamenei had long been considered a contender for the post despite never being elected or appointed to a government position. There has been only one other transfer of power in the office of the supreme leader since the Islamic Revolution almost half a century ago.

The announcement came after signs of a rift among Iranian officials as the country awaited a decision by the 88-seat Assembly of Experts, a group of clerics that selects the supreme leader.

US President Donald Trump on Sunday said Washington should have a say in the selection, having previously described the late Khamenei’s son as “unacceptable”. “If he doesn’t get approval from us, he’s not going to last long,” he told ABC News.

Israel has previously warned it will “continue to pursue every successor” to the late ayatollah.

As Iran’s powerful paramilitary Islamic Revolutionary Guard answers to the supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei will now have the central say in war strategy. He has also gained control of Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium that could be used to build a nuclear weapon — should he choose to decree it.

Meanwhile, Israel confirmed it struck a hotel in central Beirut on Sunday, killing five senior Revolutionary Guard commanders while they were “hiding in a civilian hotel”. Ten people were wounded in the attack, Lebanon’s Health Ministry said.

Israel said the commanders served in the Guards’ Quds Force’s Lebanon and Palestine corps and were involved in funding, arming and providing intelligence to Hezbollah and Hamas. Last week, the Israeli military said it killed the acting commander of the Quds Force’s Lebanon Corps in an airstrike in Tehran.

The Quds Force works heavily with Iran’s allied militant groups in the region.

Tehran struck again

Tehran’s residents woke on Sunday to a skyline shrouded in black smoke and acid rain clouds after Israeli airstrikes set ablaze key fuel depots serving one of the Middle East’s largest cities. It appeared to be the first time civilian industrial facilities had been targeted in the war.

Israel said it had also attacked missile sites and command centres, while neighbouring Bahrain said an Iranian strike had damaged one of its desalination plants.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said a US airstrike damaged an Iranian desalination plant on Qeshm Island, warning that in doing so “the US set this precedent, not Iran”.

Desalination facilities are critical for drinking water supplies in the parched deserts of the Gulf.

Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates also reported Iranian drone attacks in their countries over the weekend, with a huge fire engulfing a government office block in Kuwait.

The US embassy in Norway’s capital, Oslo, was also hit by an explosion early on Sunday, causing minor damage but no injuries, police said. It was not immediately clear what caused the blast or who was involved.

With the conflict spreading, Israel warned Lebanon of a “very heavy price” if it did not rein in Iran-allied Hezbollah militants, as it pounded the group’s strongholds with airstrikes and mounted a deadly airborne raid in the east.

The death toll from Israel’s attacks on Lebanon since Monday rose to about 300.

The conflict has rattled global markets, disrupted air travel and left Iran’s leadership weakened by hundreds of Israeli and American airstrikes. On Sunday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised “many surprises” for the next phase of the conflict.

Israel said it had continued to target senior Iranian figures, including Abolqasem Babaian, the recently appointed head of the military office of the supreme leader, killed in a strike on Saturday.

Trump has said he is not interested in negotiating with Iran and has raised the possibility that the Iranian war will end only once Tehran no longer has a functioning military or any remaining leadership in power.

Speaking to reporters on Air Force One, Trump said: “At some point, I don’t think there will be anybody left maybe to say, ‘We surrender’,” Trump said.

Trump blames Iran for school strike

Trump also blamed Tehran, without providing evidence, for last week’s airstrike on a girls’ school in Iran that killed more than 165 people, mostly children.

That is despite satellite images, expert analysis, a US official and public information released by the American and Israeli militaries suggesting that the explosion was probably caused by US airstrikes that also hit an adjacent compound associated with the regime’s Revolutionary Guard.

“No, in my opinion, based on what I’ve seen, that was done by Iran,” Trump told reporters.

Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, standing behind Trump aboard Air Force One, said the matter was still under investigation.

Trump then cut in. “We think it was done by Iran because they’re very inaccurate, as you know, with their munitions,” he said. “They have no accuracy whatsoever. It was done by Iran.”

The US and Israel have discussed sending special forces into Iran to secure its stockpile of highly enriched uranium at a later stage of the war, news website Axios reported, citing four people with knowledge of the discussions.

Asked about the possibility of sending ground troops to secure nuclear sites on Saturday, Trump said it was something they could do “later on”.

The US-Israeli attacks have killed at least 1332 Iranian civilians and wounded thousands, according to Iran’s UN ambassador, Amir Saeid Iravani.

Iranian attacks have killed 10 people in Israel. At least six US service members have also been killed, with Iran saying on Sunday it had struck US bases in Kuwait. The American service members’ remains arrived on Saturday at an air force base in Delaware.

Reuters, AP and staff reporter

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