By Parisa Hafezi and Maayan Lubell
DUBAI/JERUSALEM, March 8 (Reuters) – Iran on Sunday indicated it had chosen Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s son Mojtaba as his successor, after Israel struck fuel depots in Tehran overnight and the conflict widened after Bahrain said an Iranian attack had damaged one of its desalination plants.
“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 in Iranian media.
“The vote has been cast and will be announced soon,” Eshkevari said, without providing further details.
The council’s secretary, Hosseini Bushehri, would announce the successor to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei – who was killed earlier in the conflict – Ahmad Alamolhoda, another cleric, told state media.
U.S. President Donald Trump said on Sunday Washington should have a say in the selection. “If he doesn’t get approval from us he’s not going to last long,” he told ABC News.
Israel said it continued to target senior Iranian figures, including Abolqasem Babaian, the recently appointed head of the military office of the supreme leader, killed in a Saturday strike.
BLACK SMOKE HANGS OVER TEHRAN
As fighting escalated on day nine of the U.S.-Israeli campaign against Iran, thick black smoke hung over Tehran on Sunday, residents said, after strikes on oil storage facilities had lit up the night sky with plumes of orange flame.
Iran’s foreign ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei said the large-scale attack marked a “dangerous new phase” of the conflict and amounted to a war crime.
“By targeting fuel depots, the aggressors are releasing hazardous materials and toxic substances into the air,” he wrote on X.
Israeli military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Nadav Shoshani told reporters the depots were used to fuel Iran’s war effort, including producing or storing propellant for ballistic missiles. “They are a legal military target,” he said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his government would press on with the assault and strike Iran’s rulers “without mercy”.
“We have an organised plan with many surprises to destabilise the regime and enable change,” he said in a video statement.
Trump told reporters on Air Force One that he was not seeking negotiations to end the conflict, which has driven up global energy prices, disrupted business and snarled air travel.
“At some point, I don’t think there will be anybody left maybe to say, ‘We surrender’,” he said.
IRANIAN DRONES STRIKE GULF STATES
Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain reported Iranian drone attacks on Saturday and early Sunday, including a huge fire that engulfed a government office block in Kuwait.
Kuwait’s interior ministry said two officers were killed, while the UAE said four migrant workers had died in Iranian attacks there so far.
The UAE said air defence teams had knocked out 16 ballistic missiles and 113 drones fired towards the Gulf state on Sunday. One missile fell in the sea and four drones hit the country’s territories.
Bahrain said on Sunday that an Iranian drone attack had caused “material damage” to a desalination plant, though water supplies were not disrupted. It was the first time an Arab country has said Iran targeted a desalination facility during the conflict.
On Saturday, Iran accused the United States of striking a desalination plant on Qeshm Island, disrupting water supplies to 30 villages and calling it “a dangerous move with grave consequences.”
In Saudi Arabia, two people were killed and 12 injured after a projectile hit a residential area in Al-Kharj city, the Civil Defence agency said.
Riyadh has told Tehran that continued Iranian attacks on the kingdom and its energy sector could push Riyadh to retaliate, people familiar with the matter told Reuters.
Lebanon has also been pulled into the conflict after the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah launched rockets and drones into Israel last week, with nearly 400 people killed by Israel over the past week, the health ministry said.
Israel killed at least four people when it struck a hotel in central Beirut on Sunday, saying it had targeted Iranian commanders operating in the city — the first such strike on the heart of the Lebanese capital — amid heavy bombardment of the southern suburbs and the country’s south and east.
NEW SUPREME LEADER SELECTED, NOT NAMED
Two Iranian sources told Reuters last week that Mojtaba Khamenei, who built influence inside Iran’s security forces and vast business networks under his father, remained the clear favourite. Choosing him would signal that hardliners remain firmly in charge.
Trump has justified the biggest U.S. military operation in the Middle East since the 2003 invasion of Iraq by saying Tehran posed an imminent threat to the United States, without providing evidence. He has also said Iran was too close to being able to build a nuclear weapon.
The U.S. and Israel have discussed sending special forces into Iran to secure its stockpile of highly enriched uranium at a later stage of the war, Axios reported, citing sources.
Asked on Saturday about sending ground troops to secure nuclear sites, Trump said it was something they would only do if the Iranians were “so decimated that they wouldn’t be able to fight at the ground level.”
The U.S.-Israeli attacks have killed at least 1,332 Iranian civilians and wounded thousands, according to Iran’s U.N. ambassador.
Iranian attacks have killed 10 people in Israel. At least six U.S. service members have been killed, with Iran saying on Sunday it had struck U.S. bases in Kuwait. Israel said on Sunday that two of its soldiers were killed in southern Lebanon.
(Reporting by Reuters bureaux; Writing by Crispian Balmer and Charlie Devereux; Editing by William Mallard, Alex Richardson and Ros Russell)
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