Senior Iranian Cleric Suggests Khamenei’s Hardline Son To Be Supreme Leader

DUBAI/JERUSALEM, March 8 (Reuters) – A senior Iranian cleric who participated in the vote to elect the new religious leader said Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s son Mojtaba will be his successor, although an official statement is awaited after Israel threatened the chosen one.

The comment by Assembly of Experts member Ayatollah Hosseinali Eshkevari follows growing expectations that Mojtaba Khamenei, a hard-line cleric like his father, will be appointed as the religious leader, giving him the final say on all state matters in the Islamic Republic.

If approved, the move could draw the ire of US President Donald Trump, who has said he should have a role in choosing the next leader; This is a demand that Iran clearly rejects.

After Israel expanded its attacks against Iran to include fuel depots and held Iran responsible for the attack on Bahrain’s desalination plant, Eshkevari, one of the 88 members of the parliament, said, “Khamenei’s name will continue” in a video published in Iranian media.

“The vote has been taken and will be announced soon.” Eshkevari said without giving further details:

Israel has continued to target senior Iranian figures, including Abolkasem Babayan, the recently appointed head of the supreme leader’s military department, saying he was killed in an attack on Saturday.

Thick black smoke rose over Tehran on Sunday as fighting intensified on the ninth day of the US-Israeli campaign against Iran, residents said, after attacks on oil storage facilities lit up the night sky with orange flames.

Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said the large-scale attack marked a “dangerous new phase” of the conflict and amounted to a war crime.

“Attackers are targeting fuel depots, releasing hazardous substances and toxic substances into the air,” he wrote to X.

Israeli military spokesman Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani told reporters that the warehouses were used to fuel Iran’s war effort, including producing or storing propellant for ballistic missiles. “They are a legitimate military target,” he said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his government would continue the offensive and attack Iranian rulers “without mercy.”

“We have an organized plan with many surprises to destabilize the regime and enable change,” he said in a video statement.

According to Axios and Israeli media, US special envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner will visit Israel in the coming days.

Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One that he is not seeking negotiations to end the conflict that has driven up global energy prices, disrupted jobs and disrupted air travel.

“I don’t think at some point there will be anyone left to say, ‘We surrender,'” he said.

Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain reported Iranian drone strikes Saturday and early Sunday; this included a massive fire that engulfed a government building block in Kuwait.

Kuwait’s interior ministry said two civil servants were killed, while the UAE said four migrant workers had died so far in Iran’s attacks.

The UAE said its air defense teams neutralized 16 ballistic missiles and 113 unmanned aerial vehicles fired at the Gulf country on Sunday. A missile crashed into the sea and four drones hit the country’s territory.

Bahrain said on Sunday that an Iranian drone attack caused “material damage” to a desalination plant but water supplies were not disrupted. It was the first time an Arab country said Iran targeted a desalination plant during the conflict.

Iran on Saturday accused the United States of attacking the desalination plant on Qeshm Island, disrupting water supplies to 30 villages, calling it “a dangerous act with serious consequences.”

The Civil Defense organization said that two people died and 12 people were injured when a bullet hit a residential area in the city of Al-Kharj in Saudi Arabia.

Riyadh has told Tehran that Iran’s ongoing attacks on the kingdom and its energy sector could prompt Riyadh to retaliate, people familiar with the matter told Reuters.

Lebanon was also drawn into the conflict after Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah launched rockets and drones at Israel last week, killing nearly 400 people by Israel last week, the health ministry said.

Israel killed at least four people in an attack on a hotel in central Beirut on Sunday and said it targeted Iranian commanders stationed in the city, the first such attack on the heart of the Lebanese capital, amid heavy bombardment of the southern suburbs and the country’s south and east.

Mojtaba Khamenei, who wielded influence within Iran’s security forces and extensive business networks under his father’s rule, remains the clear favorite, two Iranian sources told Reuters last week. Electing him would signal that conservatives are firmly in control.

Trump justified the largest US military operation in the Middle East since the 2003 invasion of Iraq by saying Tehran posed an imminent threat to the US, without providing any evidence. He also said that Iran was very close to producing nuclear weapons.

The United States and Israel discussed sending special forces to Iran in the later stages of the war to secure Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium, Axios reported, citing sources.

Asked Saturday about sending ground troops to secure nuclear facilities, Trump said that was something they could only do if the Iranians were “too destroyed on the ground to fight.”

US-Israeli strikes have killed at least 1,332 Iranian civilians and injured thousands more, according to Iran’s ambassador to the UN.

10 people lost their lives in Iran’s attacks in Israel. At least six US soldiers were killed Sunday as Iran announced it had struck US bases in Kuwait. Israel announced on Sunday that two of its soldiers were killed in Southern Lebanon.

(Reporting by Reuters bureaus; Writing by Crispian Balmer and Charlie Devereux; Editing by William Mallard, Alex Richardson and Ros Russell)