BEIRUT — Iranian officials have chosen the next supreme leader to replace Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed Feb. 28 in the U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran, a senior Iranian cleric said Sunday without naming the person. Overnight, Israeli forces expanded their attacks to Iran’s energy infrastructure, setting fuel depots ablaze in Tehran, and a strike on a hotel in central Beirut brought the war with Hezbollah to the middle of the Lebanese capital.
“The election regarding the leadership has been held and the leader has been determined,” said Ayatollah Ahmad Alam al-Hoda, a senior member of the deciding body — known as the Assembly of Experts — according to Iran’s semiofficial Mehr news agency. A public announcement is expected.
There had been intense speculation that the assembly would choose one of Khamenei’s sons, Mojtaba Khamenei. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps had been pushing his candidacy but had encountered resistance from other power brokers, including Ali Larijani, the secretary of the Supreme National Security Council of Iran, a Western security official told The Washington Post. It is unclear how many figures from Khamenei’s inner circle have been killed in the expanding U.S.-Israeli operation.
The announcement came just hours after the Israel Defense Forces warned ahead of the Assembly of Experts meeting that “Israel will continue to follow any successor and anyone who seeks to appoint a successor,” warning that it would “not hesitate to target” any of the dozens of members participating in the meeting.
“Iran having a new leader would help them advance their war against us,” IDF spokesperson Nadav Shoshani said Sunday. “Iran not having a leader,” he said, “is something that makes it hard for them to operate the war machine against us.”
Here’s what to know about the war in the Middle East, now entering its second week.
Strikes set Iranian fuel depots aflame
The sky over parts of Tehran burned bright orange in the middle of the night, photos and videos showed, as Israeli strikes engulfed fuel depots in flames. The Iranian government warned citizens to stay indoors Sunday as environmental fallout from the strikes blanketed parts of the city. The Iranian Red Crescent Society warned that any rainfall Sunday could be “highly dangerous and acidic.”
Shoshani said in a briefing Sunday that the military had targeted “a number of” fuel depots being used by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
A counterattack came within hours. An Iranian drone strike hit a desalination plant in Bahrain, causing material damage, according to authorities, shortly after Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said the U.S. had damaged an Iranian desalination plant on Qeshm Island in a strike. “The U.S. set this precedent, not Iran,” he said. President Donald Trump on Saturday told reporters he was unaware of a strike on a desalination plant in Iran, and the Pentagon has not commented publicly on the claim.
The parched Persian Gulf relies on hundreds of desalination plants for drinking water — with a large bank of targets for possible retaliation.
Israel hits hotel in central Beirut
The Israeli military struck a hotel in central Beirut overnight, fueling renewed fears across Lebanon that any area could come under attack.
The strike, which hit a Ramada Hotel near the popular Raouche rocks at about 1:30 a.m. local time without warning, killed at least four people, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry.
Hezbollah continued to launch salvos at Israel on Sunday morning and said that attacks launched at advancing Israeli troops in southern Lebanon had spread to at least one new area. Israel also issued further evacuation warnings, forcing Lebanon’s population into a shrinking amount of territory as its strikes continue to thunder across large parts of southern and eastern Lebanon, as well as the southern suburbs of Beirut.
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