Iran signaled on Sunday that it had effectively chosen Mojtaba Khamenei, the son of the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, as his successor, as tensions escalated with Israel’s overnight strikes on fuel depots in Tehran, Reuters reported.
“The name of Khamenei will continue,” Ayatollah Hosseinali Eshkevari, a member of the spiritual council tasked with choosing a new leader, said in a video published by Iranian media, Reuters reported.
Read also | Iran-War LIVE: Iran hits Kuwait airport, hits Bahraini desalination unit
“The vote has been cast and will be announced soon,” Eshkevari said, without giving further details.
Council Secretary Hosseini Bushehri will announce the successor to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei – who was killed earlier in the conflict – Ahmad Alamolhoda, another cleric, told state media, according to Reuters.
US President Donald Trump said on Sunday that Washington should have a say in the selection. “If he doesn’t get approval from us, he won’t last long,” he told ABC News.
Israel said it continued to target senior Iranian officials, including Abolqasem Babaian, who was recently appointed head of the Supreme Leader’s military office and was killed in Saturday’s attack.
Read also | How many Shahed drones does Iran have and why are they key? Explained
Two Iranian sources told Reuters last week that Mojtaba Khamenei, who built influence within Iran’s security forces and vast business networks under his father, remained the clear favorite. His election would signal that hardliners remain firmly in power.
Donald Trump has defended the largest US military operation in the Middle East since the 2003 invasion of Iraq by claiming that Iran poses an imminent threat to the United States, although he has not provided evidence to support it. He also said Iran was close to being able to develop a nuclear weapon, Reuters reported.
Read also | ‘War has been established’: Iran rejects calls for ceasefire, says ‘it doesn’t work that way’
According to Axios, US and Israeli officials have discussed the possibility of deploying special forces in Iran to secure its stockpile of highly enriched uranium at a later stage of the conflict. When asked on Saturday about sending ground troops to protect nuclear sites, Trump said such action would only happen if Iran’s forces were “so decimated that they wouldn’t be able to fight on the ground.”
Iran targets Israel
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said on Sunday they had targeted the coastal city of Tel Aviv and Israel’s Negev desert with missiles, as well as US air bases in the region, AFP reported.
“The 29th wave of Operation Honest Promise 4 was launched by the new generation missiles of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Air Force towards Tel Aviv, the Negev desert and terrorist US air bases in the region,” they said in a statement carried by Iranian media.
Ongoing US-Israeli attacks have killed at least 1,332 Iranian civilians and injured thousands more, according to Iran’s UN ambassador.
(With inputs from Reuters)
