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

Jerusalem/Dubai: Mojtaba Khamenei, the son of the late supreme leader of Iran, has been appointed his successor to take charge of the theocratic regime under assault by the US and Israel for over a week.

“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 Iranian media.

The 56-year-old cleric, who had not been seen or heard from publicly since the war started, had long been considered a contender for the post. He has never been elected or appointed to a government position but he maintains close ties to the country’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, which continues to fire missiles and drones at Israel and Gulf Arab states.

The war has shaken global energy markets, pushing oil prices above $US100 a barrel. US President Donald Trump on Sunday (US time) said the surging prices were “a small price to pay” for the eradication of Iran’s nuclear program. As the crisis entered its 10th day, Trump on his Truth Social platform said prices would fall again once the conflict was over.

“Short term oil prices, which will drop rapidly when the destruction of the Iran nuclear threat is over, is a very small price to pay U.S.A., and World, Safety and Peace,” he said in his post.

The appointment of Mojtaba Khamenei has also antagonised Trump, who said the US should have a say in the selection of the next leader of Iran. He has 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 said 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 had 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.

With the conflict spreading, Israel said Lebanon would pay a “very heavy price” if it did not rein in Iran-allied Hezbollah militants, as it continues to pound the group’s strongholds with airstrikes and as it mounted a deadly airborne raid in the east. The death toll from Israel’s attacks on Lebanon since Monday rose to about 300.

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.

The Israel Defence Force also said it had destroyed military command centres in Iran, where airstrikes hit the headquarters of Iran’s regional corps, its internal security forces command centre and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps police headquarters, rocket engine production facilities and launch sites for ballistic missiles.

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.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said a US airstrike had damaged an Iranian desalination plant on Qeshm Island, saying “the US set this precedent, not Iran”. Meanwhile, neighbouring Bahrain said an Iranian strike had damaged one of its desalination plants.

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. A huge fire engulfed a government office block in Kuwait.

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

Meanwhile, a newly released video has added to the evidence that a US missile probably hit an Iranian elementary school where 175 people, many of them children, were reported killed.

The video, uploaded on Sunday by Iran’s semiofficial Mehr News Agency and verified by The New York Times, shows a Tomahawk cruise missile striking a naval base beside the school in the town of Minab on February 28. The US military is the only force involved in the conflict that uses Tomahawk missiles.

The Shajarah Tayyebeh elementary school building was severely damaged by a precision strike that occurred at the same time as attacks on a Revolutionary Guard naval base. The Pentagon has said it is yet to determine what happened, while Trump has said it was Iran, not the US, that had hit the school.

On Sunday, US 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.”

“No. In my opinion and based on what I’ve seen, that was done by Iran. They’re very inaccurate, as you know, with their munitions,” he told reporters.

Apart from rattling global markets, the conflict has disrupted air travel and left Iran’s leadership weakened by hundreds of Israeli and American airstrikes. On Sunday, Israeli 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 he 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.

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 on Saturday about the possibility of sending ground troops to secure nuclear sites, 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. The US military has announced that an American service member has died of injuries sustained during an Iranian attack on Saudi Arabia, bringing the number of US service members killed in the war to seven.

The service member died on Saturday from injuries sustained during a March 1 Iranian attack on the kingdom. Iran on Sunday said it had struck US bases in Kuwait.

Reuters, AP and staff reporter

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