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LAST UPDATE | 8 Mar
US PRESIDENT DONALD Trump warned that Iran’s next supreme leader would not last long without his approval, as Tehran prepared to reveal the successor to the slain Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Nine days after US-Israeli strikes on his compound killed Khamenei and plunged the Middle East into war, Iran’s Assembly of Experts met privately and chose their next leader, members of the body said.
The clerics did not say who had been selected, only that a name would be announced soon. Some suggested Khamenei’s 56-year-old son Mojtaba Khamenei would succeed his father.
Trump had previously demanded a say in the appointment and dismissed the younger Khamenei as an unacceptable “lightweight”.
“He’s going to have to get approval from us,” Trump told ABC News today, referring to Iran’s next leader. “If he doesn’t get approval from us he’s not going to last long.”
But Tehran’s top diplomat said earlier in the day that the decision was Iran’s alone, adding it would “allow nobody to interfere in our domestic affairs”.
Speaking on NBC’s “Meet the Press”, foreign minister Abbas Araghchi went on to demand that Trump “apologise to people of the region” for the spiralling war.
The younger Khamenei is regarded as a conservative figure, notably because of his ties to the Revolutionary Guards, the ideological arm of the Islamic republic’s military.
Israel, meanwhile, issued a stark warning that its forces would not hesitate to target the new chief and members of the Assembly of Experts that met to confirm him.
Tehran accused the United States and Israel of striking an oil depot in the Iranian capital on Saturday, the first reported assault on the Islamic republic’s oil infrastructure as stock markets have slumped and crude prices surged.
Israel’s reach was underlined by two new operations overnight – strikes against fuel dumps in and around Tehran, and an attack on a hotel in the heart of Lebanon’s capital Beirut that targeted suspected Iranian commanders.
Warplanes hit five oil facilities around the Iranian capital, killing at least four people, according to a state oil executive, and blanketing the city in acrid smoke.
Tehran’s governor told the IRNA news agency that fuel distribution had been “temporarily interrupted” in the capital.
A dark haze hung over the city of 10m people, blocking out the sun, while the smell of burning fuel lingered in the air.
Authorities warned the fumes could be toxic and urged citizens to stay indoors, but many windows were blown out by the force of the blasts.
🎯STRUCK: Several Fuel Storage Complexes Belonging to the IRGC in Tehran
— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) March 7, 2026
Guided by IDF intelligence, the IAF struck these complexes, where the Iranian terrorist regime would distribute fuel to multiple military entities in Iran.
The strike significantly deepens the damage to… pic.twitter.com/T1csYf4PCp
Israel’s military also launched a new wave of strikes “across Tehran” this morning, after carrying out a precision strike targeting “key commanders” in the Quds Force, the foreign operations arm of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, at a hotel in an area of central Beirut popular with tourists.
Lebanon’s health ministry said the strike killed at least four people at the hotel, where an AFP photographer saw shattered windows and charred walls.
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to press on with the war against Iran “with all our force”, with a plan to eradicate the country’s leadership after joint US-Israeli raids killed supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei last week, sparking the regional conflict.
Despite the threat, the Revolutionary Guards said today that the Islamic republic’s forces could wage an “intense war” for six months at the current speed of fighting.
Guards spokesman Ali Mohammad Naini said Iran had so far used “first and second generation” missiles, but would deploy “advanced and less-used long-range missiles” in the coming days.
The widening reach of the war and Iran’s ability to inflict damage were underscored by Trump attending the return of six American service members killed in a drone strike on a US base in Kuwait last Sunday.
A seventh service member has since died after being wounded in an Iranian attack.
Trump offered little detail yesterday on what he meant by demanding Iran’s “unconditional surrender”, saying it could mean the country gives up when it “can’t fight any longer and there’s nobody around to cry uncle”.
He also left open the possibility of deploying US ground troops later in the conflict, saying: “Right now we’re just decimating them… it’s something we could do later on.”
Trump added he had ruled out asking Kurdish forces to invade Iran, saying: “The war’s complicated enough without getting the Kurds involved.”
Iran’s security chief Ali Larijani accused the Trump administration of seeking to replicate a scenario similar to Venezuela, where it ousted leader Nicolás Maduro.
“Their perception was that it would be like Venezuela – they would strike, take control and it would be over – but now they are trapped,” he said in a pre-recorded interview broadcast on state TV.
Iran’s hardline judiciary chief Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei also warned Middle East neighbours which are “openly and covertly at the disposal of the enemy” that “the heavy attacks on these targets will continue”.
Iranian president Masoud Pezeshkian said today that Tehran “will be forced to respond” if a neighbouring country were to be used as a launchpad for any attack or invasion attempt.
Tehran had vowed to target US assets in the region, and Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait all reported new attacks today.
Saudi Arabia said it intercepted more than a dozen drones while Qatar said Iran fired two cruise missiles and 10 ballistic missiles at the country on Saturday.
UAE forces were intercepting incoming missiles and drones from Iran, the defence ministry said in a post on X.
Video footage on Saturday showed a projectile crashing at Dubai airport, while AFP journalists heard blasts in Iraq’s Baghdad and Erbil.
Watch the moment a drone struck Dubai International Airport’s runway, forcing the suspension of all flights on Saturday. pic.twitter.com/uU2msQeSX1
— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) March 7, 2026
Inside Iran, damage to infrastructure and residential areas is mounting as residents report growing anxiety and a heavy security presence.
“I don’t think anyone who hasn’t experienced war would understand it,” a 26-year-old teacher told AFP on condition of anonymity.
Iran’s health ministry said Friday that at least 926 civilians had been killed and around 6,000 wounded, figures AFP could not independently verify.
Air raid sirens sounded across Israel early this morning, warning of incoming missiles from Iran, with no reports of damage or casualties.
The Israeli military said air defences responded to at least four waves of missiles launched from Iran within about five hours.
Alerts were activated across much of northern, southern and central Israel including in major cities such as Tel Aviv, Haifa and Beersheba, with residents ordered into shelters or safe rooms.
The warnings were later lifted, with the military saying it was “now permitted to leave protected spaces in all areas of the country”. Israeli media reported that most missiles had been intercepted.
Missile attacks during the war, which began with US-Israeli strikes on Iran on 28 February, have killed 10 people in Israel.
There were also repeated air raid alerts early this morning in northern Israel near the border with Lebanon, as Iran-backed Hezbollah launched drones, rockets and missiles at Israel.
Israel also launched strikes on a Hezbollah bastion in the southern suburbs of Beirut after Lebanon was drawn into the conflict this week.
Lebanon’s health ministry said at least 294 people had been killed in Israeli air strikes over the past week, prompting prime minister Nawaf Salam to warn of a looming “humanitarian disaster”.
The fresh Israeli strikes followed some of the largest raids in Iran since the war began, targeting a military academy, an underground command centre and missile storage sites.
Netanyahu said Israel had achieved almost total control of the skies over Tehran.
Trump struck a similarly defiant tone, repeating claims that Iran had been close to developing a nuclear weapon and suggesting US troops could eventually be needed to secure the country’s enriched uranium stockpiles.
Separately, he blamed Iran for what authorities said was a deadly strike on an elementary school in Minab last Saturday that killed at least 150 people. Iran has blamed Washington for the attack.
With reporting from Andrew Walsh
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