The clerical body charged with choosing Iran’s next supreme leader will meet on Sunday to name a successor to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed in an attack early in the Middle East conflict.
A majority consensus over the successor has more or less been reached, said Assembly of Experts member Ayatollah Mohammadmehdi Mirbaqeri.
Another member of the council, Ayatollah Mohsen Heidari Alekasir, said in a video that a candidate had been selected based on Khamenei’s guidance that Iran’s top leader should be “hated by the enemy”.
Two Iranian sources told Reuters last week that the clear favourite was Khamenei’s son, Mojtaba Khamenei, who amassed power under his father as a senior figure in the security forces and the vast business empire they control. Choosing him would send a signal that hardliners were still firmly in charge.
United States President Donald 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.
Israeli-US strikes hit Iran fuel depots: Latest developments in Middle East war
Asked about the possibility of sending ground troops to secure nuclear sites on Saturday, Trump said it was something they could do “later on.”
The U.S.-Israeli attacks have killed at least 1,332 Iranian civilians and wounded thousands, according to Iran’s U.N. ambassador, Amir Saeid Iravani.
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.
Lebanon has also been pulled into the conflict after the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah fired rockets and drones into Israel last week.
At least four people were killed when Israel hit a hotel building in central Beirut early on Sunday, with Israel saying it had targeted Iranian commanders operating in the Lebanese capital.
It was the first such strike in the heart of Beirut, prompting fears Israel would expand its attacks to areas beyond where Hezbollah traditionally operates.
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