Mojtaba Khamenei, son of Iran's supreme leader, named as successor, Iranian state TV says
Iranian state TV announced Sunday that Mojtaba Khamenei, son of the country’s late supreme leader, has been named his successor.
The younger Khamenei had long been considered a contender, even before an Israeli strike killed his father at the start of the war, and despite never being elected or appointed to a government position.
Iran’s powerful paramilitary Revolutionary Guard answers to the supreme leader, and now Khamenei will have the central say in war strategy. The announcement came on the ninth day of the war and 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 Iran’s supreme leader.
U.S. President Donald Trump told ABC News earlier Sunday he wants a say in who comes to power once the war is over; a new leader “is not going to last long” without his approval, Trump added. The U.S. and Israel killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in the war’s opening airstrikes.
Regional anger grows over strikes
The war toll on civilian targets grew as Bahrain accused Iran of striking a desalination plant vital to drinking water supplies, and oil depots in Tehran smoldered following overnight Israeli strikes.
In a sign of rising regional anger, the Arab League chief lashed out at Iran for its “reckless policy” of attacking neighbors, including ones that host U.S. forces. Gulf countries have been struck by hundreds of missiles and drones since the war started on Feb. 28, and Iran’s president has vowed to expand attacks.
Saudi Arabia reported its first deaths, saying a military projectile fell onto a residential area and killed two people of Indian and Bangladeshi nationality. Foreign residents and workers have made up most of the war’s deaths in Gulf nations.
Israel reported its first soldier deaths, saying two were killed in southern Lebanon, where its military is fighting the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah. The U.S. military said a service member died of injuries from an Iranian attack on troops in Saudi Arabia on March 1. Seven U.S. soldiers have now been killed.
The war has killed at least 1,230 people in Iran, at least 397 in Lebanon and at least 11 in Israel, according to officials.
Iran’s president toughens tone
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian backtracked from conciliatory comments a day earlier in which he apologized for attacks on Gulf neighbors’ soil. Iranian hard-liners had swiftly contradicted him, saying war strategy wouldn’t change.
“The more pressure they impose on us, the stronger our response will naturally be,” Pezeshkian said Sunday. “Our Iran, our country, will not bow easily in the face of bullying, oppression or aggression — and it never has.”
Pezeshkian has urged neighboring states not to take part in U.S. and Israeli attacks.
The U.S. strikes have not come from the Gulf Arab governments but from U.S. bases and vessels in the region.
“The geography of some countries in the region — both overtly and covertly — is in the hands of the enemy, and those points are used against our country in acts of aggression. Intense attacks on these targets will continue,” judiciary chief Gholam Hossein Mohseni-Ejei wrote on X on Saturday.
Mohseni-Ejei and Pezeshkian are part of the three-member leadership council overseeing Iran since Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed.
Iran awaits the selection of a new supreme leader.
Desalination and oil facilities attacked
The Gulf nations of Bahrain, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates also reported additional Iranian missiles launched toward them.
Bahrain accused Iran of indiscriminately attacking civilian targets and damaging one of its desalination plants, though its electricity and water authority said supplies remained online.
Desalination plants supply water to millions of residents in the region and thousands of stranded travelers, raising new fears of catastrophic risks in parched desert nations.
Home to the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet, Bahrain also has seen hotels, ports and residential towers hit, with at least one person killed.
The desalination plant strike came after Iran said a U.S. airstrike damaged a desalination plant there. Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said the strike on Qeshm Island in the Strait of Hormuz had cut into the water supply to 30 villages.
He warned that in doing so “the U.S. set this precedent, not Iran.”
In response, CENTCOM spokesperson U.S. Navy Capt. Tim Hawkins said that “U.S. forces do not target civilians – period.”
Iranian authorities also said Israel’s overnight strikes on four oil storage tankers and a petroleum transfer terminal killed four people. Witnesses in Tehran said the smoke was so thick that it looked as if the sun had not risen.
Israel’s military said the oil depots were being used by Iran’s military for fuel to launch missiles.
The Iranian Red Crescent Society said about 10,000 civilian structures across the country had been damaged, including homes, schools and almost three dozen health facilities. It also warned Tehran residents to take precautions against toxic air pollution and the risk of acid rain after Israel’s strikes.
Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, the speaker of Iran’s parliament, said the war’s impact on the oil industry would spiral, warning it soon could become harder to produce and sell oil. Some regional producers, including in Iraq, have curbed output amid dangers in the Strait of Hormuz.
Iran maintains sufficient fuel, Veys Karami, managing director of the National Iranian Oil Products Distribution Company, told Iran’s state-run news agency.
More strikes hit Lebanon
Israel renewed its assault early Sunday on parts of Lebanon. Health Minister Rakan Nassereddine said 83 children and 82 women have been among those killed.
Israel’s military has ordered large swaths of the country to evacuate, and Lebanese officials said over 400,000 people have been displaced.
In Beirut, sheltering families crammed into schools, slept in cars or in open areas near the Mediterranean Sea, where some burned firewood to keep warm. The government said it would open a sports stadium to shelter thousands more.
Israel’s renewed offensive began last week after Hezbollah launched rockets toward northern Israel during the war’s opening days. The strikes have been the most intense since a November 2024 ceasefire. Israel has continued near-daily strikes, primarily in southern Lebanon, saying Hezbollah had been trying to rebuild its positions there.
Hezbollah said last week that after more than a year of abiding by a ceasefire its patience has ended, leaving it with no option but to fight.
Metz reported from Ramallah, West Bank, and Magdy from Cairo, Egypt. Associated Press journalists Bassem Mroue in Beirut, Qassim Abdul-Zahra in Baghdad, Amir-Hussein Radjy in Cairo, Melanie Lidman in Tel Aviv, Israel, Natalie Melzer in Nahariya, Israel, and Aamer Madhani in Doral, Florida, contributed reporting.
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