Iran moves to name new supreme leader as war enters second week

Iran’s top clerics said Sunday they were close to naming a successor to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader killed on the opening day of the war.

No successor was named, but the ayatollah’s son, Mojtaba Khamenei, has been widely seen as the leading candidate to take his father’s place.

The announcement came as massive fires burned near Tehran overnight, after U.S. and Israeli forces struck fuel depots across the capital. Israel said the sites were being used by Iran’s military, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned there were “many more targets” to come.

On Saturday, President Trump vowed that Iran would be “hit very hard” — including “areas and groups of people” not previously considered as targets — after claiming the country had “surrendered to its Middle East neighbors.”

The president’s comments on Truth Social followed a televised address by Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, who apologized to neighboring Gulf countries and suggested the strikes were the result of military units acting without clear orders after the killing of Khamenei.

But Pezeshkian rejected the demand for unconditional surrender and later issued a second statement insisting Iran’s fire had been aimed at “U.S. military bases, facilities, and installations,” not at neighboring nations.

Multiple news outlets reported on Friday that Russia is providing Iran with intelligence on the movements of the U.S. military that could aid its retaliatory attacks. It is unclear what Russia wants in return from Iran.

At least 1,230 people have been killed in Iran since the U.S.-Israeli weekend assault on Tehran, including Khamenei. At least a dozen people in Israel and more than 200 people in Lebanon have been killed, according to officials in those countries.

Six U.S. service members have died in retaliatory strikes, according to U.S. Central Command. On Saturday, Trump watched solemnly as the remains arrived at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware.

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